Capitalizing Contractions

When you shorten a word and put an apostrophe, is it still called a contraction, even if you're not squishing two words together? Like: "It's a quarter 'til three."

Anyway, my question is about the proper way to handle it when your dialogue begins with one of these contractions (for lack of a better word). When you remove the first letter of a word that should be capitalized, like 'til, or 'cause (short for "until" and "because" respectively), should the next letter in line be capitalized? Or should it be lowercase, since you've removed the capitalized letter and replaced it with an apostrophe?

Examples:

"'cause I said so, that's why!"
"'Cause I said so, that's why."

"'Til I started working for you, I had no money."
"'til I started working for you, I had no money."

Any thoughts?

Okay, thanks.

absitinvidia said:

Even better would be "Till I started working for you, I had no money."

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Now see, I thought the word "till" was a word in its own right (meaning a cash register, or to hoe the ground) and not an abbreviation for "until". There's that extra L, after all. Am I wrong?

Chase said:

You aren't wrong that "till" has other meanings, but it also means the conjunctive adverb "until."

"Till" isn't a contraction but a full word in its own right from Norse and Old English even older than "until."

"Until" is Middle English and was once spelled "untill." Confusing as it all is, the meaning may be spelled till,until, or contracted to 'til.

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Ah, interesting. Thanks for clarifying that!