Contractions

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http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/contractions.aspx

Contractions
A listener named Alex asked, “What’s the history of contraction in English usage? I just heard an interview with the Coen brothers about the movie true Grit. They point out that they were at the paint to avoid the use of contractions for an authentic 1860s American setting.”

The Coen brothers did say something like this. In a Newsweek interview, they were asked, “Did people actually not talk with contraction that time?” and they answered, “We’ve been told that the language and all that of formality is faithful to how people talked in period.”

The History of Contractions
Unfortunately, the Coen brothers were misinformed. Mark Liberman of the linguistic blog Language Log found the original True Grit novel by Charles Portis contains both contracted and uncontracted form. For comparison, however Liberman looked at two other novels, including Tom Sawyer, published in 1876, and found that those novels were more likely to include contraction than True Grit, so there’s really some contraction avoidance in the novel True Grit. May be Portis wrote that way for characterization, Liberman suggests. He also quoted a paper of Journal of English Linguistics on the history of contractions with “not.” It said that they first appeared in the writing at the beginning of the 17th century, increasing at the 18th, and more or less accepted in the 19th.

In fact, they were even contractions before 1600s, but at that time they usually weren’t indicated with an apostrophe, because the apostrophe was still a recent invention. Going back more than a thousand years, Old English has a class of contracted verbs. For example, the verb seon, “to see,” was a contraction of the earlier seohan. So contraction is not a recently development in English.

When to Use Contractions
In episode 201, we converted that most of contentious of contractions, “ain’t.” Our advice was
        In business, scholarly and other formal writing, omit “ain’t”, unless it’s used
in direct quotation, and never go around saying it in general conversation
unless it’s part of the joke or well-known saying. In dialogue or to convey a
vernacular tone in prose, use it with discretion. Treat it as spicy mustard;
don’t make a whole sandwich from it.
But why did “ain’t,” a potentially useful contraction that fills the gap where we could use a contraction of “am not,” come to be so disrespected? In Origins of the Specious, Patricia O’Conner and Stewart Kellerman wrote that “ain’t” was first used in place of both “am not” and “are not,” then for “is not,” and later, even for “has not” and “have not.” As O’Conner and Kellerman write: “’Ain’t’ claimed to have so many parents that it seemed illegitimate.”

In episode 168, we talked about respectable contractions that should nonetheless be used with care. Some are ambiguous. For example, when you read the “the dog’s,” It might be a possessive, as in “the dog’s tail”; it might be the contraction of “the dog is”; or it might be a contraction of “the dog has.” Usually the rest of the sentence will make it clear which you mean but not always, so it’s worth keeping the ambiguity in mind. For example, the sentence “I’d never run that fast” could mean “I had never run that fast” or “I would never run that fast.” Maybe the context will make it clear, but why not make it easier on the reader by writing out “I had” or “I would”?

Episode 168 also covered contraction of “have,” such as “would’ve”, “could’ve,” and “should’ve.” Whether you write these as contraction or two words, they still sound much the same as in everyday speech, so the contractions don’t save you any syllables. For that reason, our advice is to avoid them. All the more so for awkward double contractions such as “I’d’ve” and “it’ll’ve.”

Many Style Guides Recommend Using Contractions
You don’t have to avoid the contractions in all your writing. Many style guides even recommend using contractions. The Chicago Manual of Style says: Most type of writing benefit from the use of contractions. If used thoughtfully, contractions in prose sound natural and relaxed and make reading more enjoyable.

Brain Garner’s Modern American Usage advises:
The common fear is that using contractions can make the writing seem breezy. For most of us, thought, that risk is nil. What you gain should be a relaxed sincerity – not breeziness.

The federal government’s Plain Language website agrees with Garner, and adds:
“Write as you talk” is a common rule of writing readably, and the best way to do that is to use contractions. People are accustomed to hearing contractions in spoken English, and using them in your writing helps them related to your document.
Just Don’t Overdo It
So in short, use contraction in formal writing if it will sound stranger to avoid them than to use them. (If this advice sounds familiar, you might be remembering our episode on vulgar language, where we gave similar advice.) Of course, you don’t run the risk of offending your readers with contractions the way you wish swear words, but still, if you use any and all contractions just because you’re allowed to, your risk sounding awkward an distracting your readers, instead of making you writing easier to read – which is the whole point of using contractions in the first place!