For example, we couldn’t possibly have:

“I want to hold your hand” (should be “wanna”)
“Give me give me give me a man after midnight” (should be “Gimme”)

Words that are acceptable in song lyrics include:

Gonna, Dunno, Kinda, Gimme, Betcha, and others. In some American songs you can find even more extreme contractions, such as “I’m ‘on gitcha” (I’m going to get you). If these contractions are written as sing lyrics, they are treated the same as poetry, and must always be written the same way.

There is no song by the Beatles entitled “I want to hold your hand”.

This is such a nitpicky thing to rant about dude.

Yup! “Else’s” isn’t a contraction, but is instead possessive — like “Bob’s book” or “someone’s car.” But it’s legit and you can totally use it 🙂

Oof, that one’s a mouthful. It probably deserves an honorable mention, for sure!

You’re right; AP Style does call for limited use of contractions, so professional journalists would certainly do well to avoid them. Knowing one’s audience and context is key.

Totally see where you are coming from on the issue of clarity. I definitely think these contractions are more appropriate to speech than writing as well. No prob and have a good one!