Re: Story - TCOAIW

Tristan wrote:
>Well yes. I was taught not to write them in grade two or something.
>Except for the fact that we went to great lengths to show the
>relationship between them and the uncontracted forms. And I was taught a
>lot of things that just aren't natural and best ignored... and have been
>breaking the rules ever since with no complaint, unlike those who
>started every sentence with 'and' or 'then'... I've assumed the lack of
>a complaint was because it's okay if done right, and I'm doing it right.
>It could also just be that they decided I'd be too stubborn and let me
>get away with it and ignore it when marking etc. ;)
>
I'm just a Moral Relativist, I suppose, but I find nothing wrong with
contractions in prose nowadays.  Frankly, as I read TCOAIW I didn't even
notice them.  Had it been a formal presentation of a conlang, a medical
case-history or a court decision, an eyebrow or two might have been raised.
(Noun plus contraction does seem more awkward than Pronoun plus
contraction.) Though I'm still enough of a pedant that I probably wouldn't
use them except in reported speech (and email of course).

Certainly in the Olden Days (TM) we were definitely taught that contractions
don't belong in written work, yea, not even in letters to friends.... Well,
that's changed. One sees them now in newpapers, magazines, fiction etc.
About the only place they're discouraged is in academic/professional
writing, just as one is not supposed to use "I"-- "one" or the royal we
seems acceptable, however...

As for French, hah!.... I would leave my tutor's house, where I was
routinely berated for such things as "c'est pas possible", then head for my
favorite bistro where I would hear that and similar from every Frenchman in
the place......(this in the late 50s).