Did People Use Contractions Less in Older English?

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Sue Burns from Iowa.

Hey, Sue, welcome to the show. What’s on your mind?

Well, I have been reading and researching my great-great-grandmother’s diary, which she started in 1888 and continued until she died in 1922.

And I have noticed that she did not use contractions.

And I was kind of wondering if you could maybe shed some light on why that might be.

I mean, I know contractions were used because I’ve also been reading court transcripts from that same time period, and they’re full of contractions.

So I know people use it speaking.

I don’t know if she didn’t use contractions in her diary because it was written, and she thought it was too informal for written communications or what was going on.

That’s a really good question, Sue.

Did you have the impression that she knew she was writing for history, for legacy?

Like, does she have a self-consciousness in what she’s writing?

There was and there wasn’t.

At the very beginning of the diary, she would talk about, you know, I can talk to my diary like a friend.

And it was much more of a, you know, sort of a confidant kind of thing and very personal.

Later in her diary, she had written about reading another book that was also in the form of a diary.

And she wrote something about whoever may read these words after the hand that has penned them has ceased its labors kind of thing.

So she did at some point think that maybe somebody in the future would be reading it, but that wasn’t really carried out throughout the entire diary.

What was her life like? Was she an educated woman working, say, in academia or something like that?

No, she was born in 1842, and her family moved to Iowa when she was 11.

And her older sister taught school near her house for other people in the community.

So I assume she went to her sister’s school.

She read a lot.

She wrote about all the subscriptions to magazines and newspapers, and she wrote a lot about what she was reading.

So I know she read a lot, but I don’t know if she actually had education past eighth grade or high school.

The reason that we ask these questions, Sue, is that there has been off and on over the history of English certain self-appointed experts who have suggested or demanded that other people not use contractions, both in written and spoken language.

Now, this is a problem because contractions have existed in English, in Old English, in Elizabethan English.

And they kind of fell out of favor in the 18th century when these experts kind of really came into their own, when literacy started to become more widespread and people were looking to reference books and experts in order to improve themselves.

And so this is part of that whole package that took place in English where we get all these non-rules that stick around, these ghost rules that aren’t really rules, and where we get things like trying to regularize spelling and, you know, large, broad prescriptions against certain written or spoken behavior because the person writing is of one dialect and they’re criticizing the dialect of all these other people.

And so this proscription against contractions kind of falls right in there.

Now, as you can hear, it’s kind of an up and down thing.

Like you get authorities like Henry Fowler, who said that they were fine for natural conversational writing.

And a lot of experts, again, experts is in quotes there because usually they’re self-appointed.

They just kind of took it upon themselves to be the boss of language.

A lot of experts say, oh, it’s fine only in formal writing.

But then we have this problem of terms. What is formal writing? Is it all schoolwork? Is it only when you’re talking to somebody of a higher class than you or somebody that you want something from, like a judge or an employer?

So it’s kind of complicated.

But I think for me, the best advice comes from this magazine called Correct English by Josephine Turok Baker.

And the very first issue in 1899, she writes about people who, as she puts it, endeavor to eschew contractions altogether.

But she says there’s no good reason why you shouldn’t use contractions if you use the proper ones.

So by that, she means avoiding ain’t.

And she writes, to refrain from using contractions has the tendency to lend a pedantic air to one’s speech.

In dignified utterances, before large assemblies, one has less license.

But in conversational utterances, contractions are permissible.

So I think probably your great-great-grandmother was under sway of somebody who thought that contractions were too informal.

And she was trying to present herself in this legacy situation where she knew that she would be read in the future as an educated woman, as somebody who knew how to conduct herself properly on a page.

Well, Sue, what a rich and wonderful experience you’re having.

I would be reading that aloud just to give voice to those words.

Do you ever do that?

Oh, yeah.

Well, I wrote a book based on her diary where I did all this research into what she was talking about, what was going on in the world at the time, and all that kind of thing.

And I do have – I give presentations about it, and I do read from her diary in those presentations.

Well, I’d love to read your book.

Yeah, me too, Sue.

Thank you so much for calling us and sharing your memories and your family history with us.

All right.

Thank you for taking your time.

I appreciate it.

Take care of yourself.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye.

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