to use contractions. Strictly speaking, no contractions, particularly elaborate ones like “couldn’tve,” should appear in academic or otherwise formal writing.
But increasingly, the highest, most constrained styles allow contractions as they come closer to spoken language, which is full of such elisions. No guidebook or reference can tell you whether to use
contractions in what you write, but there are some points to consider. If you are unsure of the style expected of you, it is probably best to be cautious and avoid contractions. However, even in the most demanding styles, some uncontracted phrases may sound a ected or pretentious.
When you face such a situation, you might decide to yield to the temptation to allow a less formal, more speechlike contraction to creep into what you write.
A few contractions have become standard English,
usually when archaic phraseshave been contracted into commonly used forms “ ve of the clock ve o’clock.”
Only the contracted forms of such words are used. See also
its, their, and
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