oh my word!

How do you feel about contractions? No, not the muscle movements experienced by women giving birth. I mean contractions such as couldn’t for could not, I’ll for I will, or we’re for we are.

Before we get going properly, let us make a distinction between contractions, acronyms, and clipping. Acronyms such as Nato (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) and Asda (Associated Dairies), I am fine with. Textspeakstyle acronyms such as BRB (be right back) or TTYL (talk to you later), I regard as lazy.

Clippings, in which the beginning or end of a word is left off, have to have been in popular usage for a long time before I fully accept them. I see the merit in bus (for omnibus), and fridge (for refrigerator) but I’m not yet comfortable with vet (for veteran) or chute (for parachute). I shall perhaps reconsider these in a few decades’ time.

I’m talking about the contractions we put into speech, and wonder whether we should allow them in writing? In the distant past, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I was at school, contractions were frowned upon in formal writing. I was taught not to use them. But dinosaurs became extinct, I grew up, and I have tended to use more and more contractions the older I have become. Look, I’m using one now.

There are certainly contractions I do not like and will not use. Amn’t (for am not) is often uttered in speech, but looks terribly wrong when written. And where’d (for where did) I find similarly ugly.

Personally, I am prepared to accept contractions in writing when quoting direct speech, but believe thought should be given to which of them find their way into serious writing. If, for instance, you wish to use a contraction but are not sure how to spell it or whether to use an apostrophe in it, do not use it. But, on other occasions, use of I’m, I’ll, aren’t, wasn’t, it’ll, etc, look natural even in writing.

All this is another example of the degree to which all English users are bilingual. We use two versions of English, one that we speak and one that we write; the language we use in speech being much more likely to contain contractions.

There are many other differences between the two versions of English. In speech, it is common for sentences to be left unfinished. In written English, we always carry on until a full stop is arrived at. There’s nothing more annoying than reading an unfinished…