|
I'm a child of the late Cold War, and at school here in Australia we were taught in no uncertain terms that the use of contractions would mark us as common and ill-educated. Only lower-class working people would use contractions, and we wouldn't want to be seen as that, would we? (Admittedly, this was back when Australia was still trying to be more British than the British ... or at least, how we perceived the British to be, from what we heard of the BBC's "veddy veddy" use of language and its RP accents.)
Many people I encounter professionally still see the use of contractions in writing as poor English, even though the magazines I sub-edit are largely conversational in their tone. Most of our contributors have technical knowledge in their field but aren't natural writers, and I'm amazed at the contortions they put their phrasing through in attempting to sound "professional". (I suspect that's fairly common in business and academic writing as well, with people striving to sound "posh".) There's one bloke I edit who writes in a very conversational tone, but never uses a single contraction, and the effect it has is interesting - his column sounds constipated, as if he's simply trying too hard.
|