Not having contractions.

[SkyBubble]

Read a story the other day that made me question if it was bot generated. It was all 'you are', 'they are', 'we are' and quite a few more where contractions would be quite normal. I forget what all the other instances were, but there were enough to make reading clumsy. But there were others like can't and don't, so I dropped the Bot though and even ESL, or other typical possibilities.

Can anyone see a possible reason?

It probably was a bot.

 

[SkyBubble]

Microsoft Word (my version, at least) highlights all contractions with the advice to undo them. I would suggest that what you read was similarly influenced. And if you find the absence of contractions in quoted speech, no doubt it was computer driven.

Advice you can easily ignore. Humans use contractions.

 

[SkyBubble]

Snippet:

​

They ought to be in pictures, porn pictures. I would watch them.​

​

But I am prejudiced.​

​

'OK, give me a minute.'​

​

Then, I heard the camera warning of someone at the front door.​

​

Man, they are back.​

​

'Guys, sorry, someone at my door. I will call tomorrow night.'​

​

'OK, we will send current pictures of your favorite cocks.'​

​

​

​

No, I'm, I'll, we'll, they're, I'd .....

Looks like AI to me.

 

[TheLobster]

Sure. If you use one contraction, that means you have to replace every vowel with an apostrophe. That's what I meant.

L’k’ w’ c’n s’’ h’r’, th’s st’ll m’k’s ‘v’ryth’ng p’rf’ctly r’d’bl’.

 

[Voboy]

By preference, I write in 3P omniscient. I don't use contractions in narration; it lends unwanted personality to the narrator.

My current [new] WiP is in 3P, which is somewhat unusual for me: I use it in fantasy, horror, SF, or historical stuff sometimes.

What I find, though, is that I don't write very fluidly unless I'm doing it more or less conversationally. Meaning, I can do formal, stilted, affect-less prose all day, but I'd really rather not. It's much more enjoyable to me to add a bit of personality, which I prefer as a reader. So I add it as a writer, too.

Even though I am 3P for this one, I'm still giving it more of a 1P voice, almost as if the piece is a storyteller talking about something that happened. It seems to be working so far.

 

[designatedvictim]

Read a story the other day that made me question if it was bot generated. It was all 'you are', 'they are', 'we are' and quite a few more where contractions would be quite normal. I forget what all the other instances were, but there were enough to make reading clumsy. But there were others like can't and don't, so I dropped the Bot though and even ESL, or other typical possibilities.

Can anyone see a possible reason?

A lot of speculation in the thread.

I tend to leaned toward ESL, but that has been discussed.

You would think with my wordiness, I would skip the contractions (why use one word when four makes things longer?), but I do not. Contractions in narration and dialog, all the way, baby! (Leaves more room for other words.)

Lack of contractions feels like rules-based writing. Well... thinking. I would expect ESLs to think in those terms.

As native speakers are generally aware, English does not have rules, it has guidelines, which are mainly honored in their breach.

 

[Britva415]

By preference, I write in 3P omniscient. I don't use contractions in narration; it lends unwanted personality to the narrator.

So does not using contractions. It's just a different personality.

The "wanted" one, I guess

 

[XerXesXu]

My current [new] WiP is in 3P, which is somewhat unusual for me: I use it in fantasy, horror, SF, or historical stuff sometimes.

What I find, though, is that I don't write very fluidly unless I'm doing it more or less conversationally. Meaning, I can do formal, stilted, affect-less prose all day, but I'd really rather not. It's much more enjoyable to me to add a bit of personality, which I prefer as a reader. So I add it as a writer, too.

Even though I am 3P for this one, I'm still giving it more of a 1P voice, almost as if the piece is a storyteller talking about something that happened. It seems to be working so far.

Some would say, 'much better to get out of the way and let your characters speak for themselves', even some who don't use 3P O narration. 3P O, however, does make that easier to achieve.

 

[XerXesXu]

So does not using contractions. It's just a different personality.

The "wanted" one, I guess

Correct. If you don't want neutral narration, that's easily achieved by choosing an appropriate narrative perspective.

 

[SirNoseDVoidOfFunk]

As native speakers are generally aware, English does not have rules, it has guidelines, which are mainly honored in their breach.

The other Germanic languages are R&B twelve bars but English is free jazz?

One obvious possibility about the story under discussion is that rather than the author having learned English as a second language or being a bot, it might be a device that's being used top make the narrator (or narration) sound more formal, particularly if the occasional contractions that Five Inch Heels noted are present in the story appear in dialogue or something like that.

 

[soflabbwlvr]

Contractions are frowned upon in many professional fields. I know they are looked at with disfavor in my profession. I tend to avoid them as much as possible, except in dialog where it would be unnatural not to use them.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

Ain't no way I'd be a'workin' in no stuffy assed place like that.

 

[Davidbeer1]

In ordinary prose, I think that the rule should be "if in doubt, don't." Every sentence in which one is tempted to use a contraction should be read over to judge whether the rhythm would be improved. I would rarely, if ever, use two in one sentence. In conversation, contractions are and should be much more common.

 

[TheLobster]

In ordinary prose, I think that the rule should be "if in doubt, don't."

I see you are very confident in this rule, considering you haven't worded it as "If in doubt, do not."

 

[Davidbeer1]

I see you are very confident in this rule, considering you haven't worded it as "If in doubt, do not."

Good point, but I don't think there is any doubt in this case. I also think that, in these short contributions to a discussion, conversational rules apply. I was tempted to add, however, that if I think there are too many contractions creeping in, I sometimes change the wording to avoid them. Hence, something like: "Avoid them if in doubt."

 

[SimonDoom]

On style questions like this one, one of my favorite sources to consult is Dreyer's English by Benjamin Dreyer, chief copy editor for Random House. He obviously knows what he's talking about from vast experience and learning, and he has a good sense of humor as well. He specifically addresses this issue and refers to "don't use contractions" as a "non-rule." He says, "This may be a fine rule if you want to sound as if you learned your native English on Mars."

 

[Areala-chan]

Lack of contractions might also represent someone whose day to day life revolves around not using them in their work. Formal writing, like you'd see in academic papers and legal writing, generally omits contractions to maintain a specific tone throughout. Someone who has trained themselves to omit them for their job may not even realize they're doing it when they make the switch over to creative mode, because their brain sees that as the 'normal' setting.

 

[XerXesXu]

On style questions like this one, one of my favorite sources to consult is Dreyer's English by Benjamin Dreyer, chief copy editor for Random House. He obviously knows what he's talking about from vast experience and learning, and he has a good sense of humor as well. He specifically addresses this issue and refers to "don't use contractions" as a "non-rule." He says, "This may be a fine rule if you want to sound as if you learned your native English on Mars."

'1. Contractions Aren’t Allowed in Formal Writing.

This may be a fine rule to observe if you want to sound as if you learned English on your native Mars, but there’s not a gosh darn thing wrong with “don’t,” “can’t,” “wouldn’t,” and all the rest of them that people naturally use, and without them many a piece of writing would turn out stilted and wooden. The likes of “I’d’ve” and “should’ve” are perhaps a bit too loosey goosey outside casual prose, but generally speaking: Contractions are why God invented the apostrophe, so make good use of both.'

Is fiction formal writing?

 

[StillStunned]

Lack of contractions might also represent someone whose day to day life revolves around not using them in their work. Formal writing, like you'd see in academic papers and legal writing, generally omits contractions to maintain a specific tone throughout. Someone who has trained themselves to omit them for their job may not even realize they're doing it when they make the switch over to creative mode, because their brain sees that as the 'normal' setting.

Most of my professional editing and proofreading is for banks, law firms and the like. When I started to write for fun, that was a habit I had to break. I still sometimes catch myself uncontracting.

 

[SimonDoom]

'1. Contractions Aren’t Allowed in Formal Writing.

This may be a fine rule to observe if you want to sound as if you learned English on your native Mars, but there’s not a gosh darn thing wrong with “don’t,” “can’t,” “wouldn’t,” and all the rest of them that people naturally use, and without them many a piece of writing would turn out stilted and wooden. The likes of “I’d’ve” and “should’ve” are perhaps a bit too loosey goosey outside casual prose, but generally speaking: Contractions are why God invented the apostrophe, so make good use of both.'

Is fiction formal writing?

I'd say yes, it is, because "informal writing" is writing that one writes in an informal setting with people one knows -- emails, letters, chats, posts in this forum, that sort of thing. Published fiction isn't like that.

I think fiction, however, is less formal than the kind of writing one does for an academic paper, or a company memo, or a legal brief.

That being so, the so-called "rule against contractions" would be even weaker in the context of fiction than non-fiction, so Dreyer's point holds more strongly for fiction than it does for non-fiction.

 

[XerXesXu]

I'd say yes, it is, because "informal writing" is writing that one writes in an informal setting with people one knows -- emails, letters, chats, posts in this forum, that sort of thing. Published fiction isn't like that.

I think fiction, however, is less formal than the kind of writing one does for an academic paper, or a company memo, or a legal brief.

That being so, the so-called "rule against contractions" would be even weaker in the context of fiction than non-fiction, so Dreyer's point holds more strongly for fiction than it does for non-fiction.

But how did he define it?

 

[SimonDoom]

But how did he define it?

To my knowledge, he did not. But the context in which he used the phrase--a chapter on "rules and nonrules"--suggests he meant it to apply to both fiction and nonfiction. Random House publishes both.

 

[XerXesXu]

To my knowledge, he did not. But the context in which he used the phrase--a chapter on "rules and nonrules"--suggests he meant it to apply to both fiction and nonfiction. Random House publishes both.

Quite. He didn't. Random House doesn't edit Statutes or legal pleadings, it takes them as it finds them. Dreyer's general point is that 'anything goes'. Random House is very much more permissive than any style guide. But, he's a copy editor, not a creative writer; he has almost nothing to say about how the use or non-use of contractions may be used creatively in fiction. He probably doesn't know; that's not his area of expertise.

 

[SimonDoom]

Quite. He didn't. Random House doesn't edit Statutes or legal pleadings, it takes them as it finds them. Dreyers' general point is that 'anything goes'. Random House is very much more permissive than any style guide. But, he's a copy editor, not a creative writer; he has almost nothing to say about how the use or non-use of contractions may be used creatively in fiction. He probably doesn't know; that's not his area of expertise.

Penguin Random House is the biggest publisher of fiction in the USA, so it's flatly untrue to say it's not his area of expertise. He's been exposed to, and has read and edited, an extremely wide range of fiction and nonfiction and would qualify in any court of law in the USA as an "expert" on the style conventions that commonly apply in fiction and nonfiction. He would know better than just about anybody else.

Editors are often much MORE knowledgeable than writers about acceptable conventions, because it's their job to know them. I spent a little time in the past as an editor of academic articles. The authors knew their subjects, but some of them knew nothing about writing. Some of them were terrible writers. Editors gets exposed to a very wide range of writings, and to be a good editor you have to have good judgment, an attention to detail, and knowledge about how things are and aren't done. Otherwise, you can't be good as an editor.

Regardless, I think the point is that he's well qualified to say on the basis of experience that there's no such thing in contemporary published writing as a "no contractions" rule. It doesn't exist. I read a lot of contemporary fiction and the use of contractions is common. It's true, as you say, that it depends somewhat on the type of point of view and type of voice you want to create in your fiction, but even in third party omniscient there's no accepted "rule" in modern fiction that it's wrong to use contractions.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

Why do y'all always go to complicatin' theads?

We're talkin' Lit-erature here, not pro tech manuals.