OK, so as an Information Architect who's concerned about words (and their meanings and usages), I may be able to provide a somewhat definitive and (I believe) totally consistent answer.
'stralin is Kiwi for Strayn. We're obviously better educated and more literate, and know how to use an apostrophe for contraction's rather than just pluralising word's :-)
Except that you DON'T use apostrophes for making nouns plural. Apostrophes are used for contractions (as in don't) and for indicating the possessive of an object OTHER THAN 'it' - Brown's car, the dog's breakfast, but never it's possession. Oh - in their guise as single quotes, they are also used to mark 'borrowed' words in a different context, and for indirect quotations (those that do not have an implied 'he said' or 'he wrote' before or after them).
Having watched Glassboy's pronouncements over time, I was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt and assumed he was writing ironically (word's for words)
Abbreviation: A shortened or contracted form of a word or phrase (term), used to represent the whole.
Abbreviations come in many forms: Contractions, Reductions, Initialisms and Acronyms (and Symbols).
A contraction is where the start and end of the word remain (such as Dr for Doctor).
A reduction is where one or other end of the word is "lopped off" (such as etc. for Et Ceterea - incidentally, if you've ever wondered why MS word isnsists on puitting a full stop after etc. its because (in English) reductions get a full stop to indicate the lopping off and contractions DON'T; so "Dr." is incorrect).
Initialisms are those terms formed by using the initial leters of the words, where you don't pronounce the result as a word - such as FBI
Acronyms are like intialisms except you pronounce the word - such as RADAR RAdio Detection And Ranging. Acronyms can include other letters to aid in pronunciation.
Symbols are very short terms used to indicate a longer term such as AU for Australian in AU$ or Cu for Copper.
And as I type this, I notice that you have corrected your post. Look, he DID abuse an apostrophe, honest, he did HE DID! :->
Edit: Or was that Mr KP doing a clean up? Actually, since KP and I are both of English extraction, this says nothing about the Australian 'way with words'. Perhaps a dinky-die Australian could chip in with some limpid prose to refute that fellow from across the Tasman?
'Tis another use fo the apostrophe to indicate letters dropped or removed for reductions in addition to contractions - otherwise how could you tell that the first letter you see is actually NOT the first letter.
So "'strain' although somewhat obtuse is acceptable as the apostrophe alludes to the "sotto voce" missing "Au". 'Strain differentiates the word from the word strain - with it's normal meaning.
HTH,
Paolo
