Do you know the difference between ‘I’d’ & ‘I’d’?

Tricky Teatime Titbits for this Thursday morning, eh?! You know we love to shorten everything to save speaking and typing energy.

‘I’d’ & ‘I’d’ obviously look exactly the same, but depending on the context, mean two different things. Let’s take the example that you want to give advice. Here are two common ways.

1. If I were you, I would (n’t) (do such & such)
2. You had better (do such & such)

You guessed it that both can be shortened to:

1. If I were you, I’d ….. so ‘would’ is shortened to ‘d’
2. You’d better ….. so ‘had’ is shortened to ‘d’

There you have the difference between ‘I’d’ & ‘I’d’! It’s also worth noting here that there is a difference in the “seriousness” of the advice phrases, with ‘You’d better’ expresses a warning whereas ‘if I were you … , you are simply putting yourself in the other person’s position and telling them how you would react.

If I were you, I’d definitely read tomorrow’s Teatime Titbit too and you’d better give this one the thumbs up and comment on how useful you found this post and how much you looooove Teatime Titbits, or else!!!I

to shorten (abkürzen), to give sb advice (Rat erteilen), such & such (das und das), to guess (etw raten), It’s worth noting (Es ist beachtenswert), whereas (während), or else! (sonst setzt’s was)