A few stolen minutes out of your day to talk words and communication, because our daily lives are surrounded by the evolution and influence of words. Forget the grammar police. There is so much more to this conversation.
Episode #36 – Are You With’t? Contractions & the Latest in Words You Should Know
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Approximate transcript:
Welcome to episode number 36, where we’ll revel in the glory of defying every teacher who ever told you to avoid contractions in formal writing. The line’s not quite so black and white, and history lends so much more to this discussion. But first…
The Latest in Word, Language & Writing News
One trend I’ve been noticing lately is the popularity of “grammar.” Yes, you heard me right, and I’m not just saying this as the author of a grammar book. I’m saying this because the concept of “grammar,” as in the core structure of things, has recently been hijacked—no, too strong of a word, let’s go with “borrowed”—in conversations across so many different areas of expertise.
Phys.org, among many others, recently published an article about the “grammar” of DNA. Atlas Obscura recently published a piece on “Food Grammar, the unspoken rules of Everyday Cuisine.” As much as the concept of “grammar” might sound either boring or remind us of ferocious red ink marks all over past tests and essays from school years, it’s something we need. It’s something we crave. Structure, methodology, knowing the rules of the game so we can all play it well together.
And, as click bait for you, just take a moment with this line from the mentioned Atlas Oscura article: “Technically, spaghetti and meatballs is bad grammar.” All of these links, of course, are in my show notes.
Two other quick language news stories to mention:
First, let’s go with a story that made me do a double-take. In trying to understand language processing and how our brains function, Yuchen Liang, a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, along with his colleagues and the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, have created a simulated fruit fly brain, which has learned to perform natural language processing tasks. This is not a stand-alone device. They literally hacked a fruit fly’s brain. To quote from the article, “It matches the performance of artificial learning networks while using far fewer computational resources.” Yep, the brain is a magnificent thing. The human brain. The fruit fly brain. My brain is slightly blown by this research, and, again, to quote the article, “the first time a naturally occurring network has been commandeered in this way.”
You can read more via Discover Magazine, the link, of course, in my show notes.
And lastly, returning to the idea of the imperative nature of correct grammar, a case was just decided by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit because of the usage of the phrase “a plurality of” followed by a series held together with the word “and” versus the word “or.” So to be clear, we’re talking about the difference between “the plurality of A, B, and C” versus “a plurality of A, B, or C.” Also in this debate, the changing of meaning with the inclusion of the article “the.” I won’t go into all of the details of this case, SIMO Holdings, Inc. v. Hong Kong uCloudlink Network Technology Limited. Follow the links for more details, where the findings refer specifically to how the “plurality of each recited component was at odds with the claim language based on the application of grammatical rules.”
Words matter, folks—spoken, written, or however you’re communicating.
English Language History & Trivia
And we’re not going into legal communications today, but we will go into the formality of our language use. Specifically, let’s talk contractions. If you’re writing a legal brief, as one example, those teachers you had in middle school were absolutely right. That’s not the time or place for contractions; however, are contractions something you should always avoid? What about business emails? What about dialogue in your fiction? What about the antiquated ones like ‘tis and ‘twas or regionalisms like y’all and you-uns? What does Shakespeare have to say about all of this?
William Shakespeare loved contractions. Just looking at contractions including the word “it” alone, we have “’tis, ’twas, ’twill, ‘twould. “ Sure, their modern counterparts would be “It’s” “It’ll” and the less popular but still used “It’d.” But many of his contractions are ones we still commonly use, for example those linked with forms of the verb “to be,” like “she’ll,” “we’ll,” “there’s,” “he’s,” and “I’m.”
But while we often speak of Shakespeare when we’re talking about the roots of our present-day English language, we need to go much, much further back, all the way to the days of Old English, before English was even written in Latin letters. Because remember, Old English was originally written in the runic alphabet.
Now, if you’re reading along in the transcript of this episode, please forgive that I’m not writing any Old English in the runic alphabet, because I’ll be clear, I don’t know it. I’m guessing you don’t either, though, so I’m hoping we’ll all be okay with the modern-alphabet versions of these words. Don’t you love disclaimers?
Anyway, even Old English gives us contractions. “’Nis,” for example, is the contraction of “ne is” or “is not” or “isn’t” to a modern English speaker. The Old English word “n’olde” came from “ne wolde,” meaning “would not” or “wouldn’t.” And oh yeah, that “l” is in this form of the word “would” even then.
Middle English has plenty of contractions too. Just looking at Canterbury Tales, a go-to for Middle English usage, we have “n’oot,” a contraction of ne woot, meaning “knows not,” and “n’ere,” a contraction coming from ne were, meaning “were not” or “weren’t.” There’s some contraction gems in there too like “th’ilke,” from “the ilke,” meaning “the same,” and … wait for it … “sit’” from “sitteth,” as in to put one’s backside down, yes, the same definition of sit as today.
So long story short, please don’t be tricked by the common misunderstanding that contractions are simply signs of contemporary language laziness. Are they appropriate in all situations? Perhaps not. If you’re writing for an academic audience or a cover letter to be attached to your resume for a job application, these may be instances of slipping the tightened form. But this is equally true for other reduced forms, like clipped word forms, “pro” for “professional,” for example.
And a note for the historical fiction writers out there: please don’t try to sound “old-fashioned” by dropping all of your contractions and writing your dialogue more formally. It often comes off as more stilted than authentic. And it’s not historically accurate.
Fun fact: “Ain’t” was actually considered fine English until the Victorian period, so the 1800s. This is when a lot of the contractions started to seem “lesser,” “lower class,” or “less educated.” Oh, Victorians. Come on, y’all.
And speaking of y’all, which originated in the American South in the 1800s and moved out west, we can also look at other tightenings like “you-uns” or “yins,” not quite contractions with apostrophes involved, but on the same wavelength, came to be in the early 1800s in what’s sometimes called “the American Old Northwest,” as in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Some contractions might require a moment more of pause in their written use, like “she’d’ve,” for “she would have,” something one might not even notice when spoken but that looks a bit complicated on paper, “S-H-E” apostrophe “D” apostrophe “V-E.”
Let’s wrap this up with an Elizabethan contraction I argue we should bring back: “with’t,” as in “with it.” If you wanted to be really with it—or should we say “with’t”—you should know when and how you can use your contractions. Yep “with’t,” that’s “W-I-T-H” apostrophe “T.” Was that Shakespearean slang? Let’s be clear. It wasn’t. But maybe we can bring it back with a new twist? Feeling with’t?
Okay, maybe not. But we do live in a fast-paced world. Does our using of contractions speed up our communications even more? Who knows? But it’s good to know the legacy of our language.
Language Challenge
Do you want to use contractions in your communications? Are you wont to do so? Are these two words in these two sentences spelled the same?
Let me repeat that:
Do you want to use contractions in your communications? Are you wont to do so?
Are they spelled the same? Or are they different.
The answers, as always, can be found on my website.
Personal Update:
I don’t know what it is about this moment, whether it’s the fact that it’s cold and bleak wintertime, whether it’s the fact that the pandemic is still hitting hard, or whether it’s just a coincidence, but I’ve had the joy of past fiction editing clients reaching out to me, en mass, in the past week or so. The creative drive is there. Stories are inside of us. And it’s time to get them right and send them on their way out into the world, whatever that route happens to be for any given writer—traditional publication with literary agents pitching top publishers; indie publishing with grit, savvy, and tenacity; or anything and everything in between.
Now the editorial relationship, at least for me, always feels like a deeply personal one. I have the opportunity to explore the ideas hidden in the wrinkles of my client’s brains and to help their projects evolve into the projects we both know they can be. But something about the past week or two. What is it? The 2021 groundhog prediction claims we’re in for a longer winter—thanks for that Punxsutawney Phil—but the spark of creativity endures. It’s heating up. It’s on fire in so many of us.
Let’s all keep going, whatever that spark may hold for you.
Ne’er a day may pass that I’m not inspired by the storytellers. ‘Tis true. Am I going to far? Or just too far back in time? What’s your take on contractions in your own writing? Or what’s your own mid-winter creative spark? Get in touch. I’d love to hear all about it
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Words. Language. Communications. We’ve got this.