Caedes et Caenum

I thought it might be useful to try and clear up a very reasonable misconception concerning the use of “contractions” in prose.  Contractions are words or word groups that have been shortened by omitting certain internal letters, closing up spaces, and (usually) leaving an apostrophe in place of missing characters.  Examples include don’t, shouldn’t, can’t, and the like.  These well-established language tools are often wrongly perceived as being too informal for use in legal or other important writings.  While we can probably all think of at least one contraction that ain’t going to be acceptable in any context, contractions in many instances are perhaps the smartest way to present a verb concept in a precise, artful fashion.

I must acknowledge at the outset that, to some extent, perception is reality when it comes to matters of style and usage.  (To quote Neil Young, “The picture painted here is not a dream; the only reality is the way it seems.”)  In other words, if you’re writing for a judge who views the use of contractions as the mark of fools (or as unasked-for cheek), then by all means, avoid them.  But what both you and the judge should be aware of is that in some cases, a contraction might be the absolute best way to communicate a thought persuasively and without risking a potential misreading.

Consider the following.  In other languages, certain contractions are actually mandatory.  In French, for example, you would never say or write ce est la vie.  Instead, you’d say c’est la vie (that’s life).  In Spanish, the preposition de (of) and the article el (the) are always combined into del (of the), perhaps so as to avoid being confused with de él (his/of him).  Similarly, in German, you’d probably be expected to write zum Kirche (to the church), not zu der Kirche.

In English, though, we don’t really turn prepositional phrases into contractions.  Instead, we contract do not into don’t, or does not into doesn’t, or even I will into I’ll.  In the first two of these examples, we’re actually blending together multiple words of disparate implication in order to create a single, cohesive verb concept.  The word do by itself is an action verb having an infinitive, affirmative character.  The word not is, of course, negative.  But when you put them together, you get a single syllable that can be used to communicate a host of important concepts in several verb moods:

• I don’t think that’s right.  « indicative mood
• Please don’t use split infinitives. « imperative mood
• Don’t you just love the new Lexus LFA? « indicative mood

The multi-conceptual quality of contractions often provides us with very handy usages that are much easier to say and more naturally understand than their spelled-out, formal versions:

• I wouldn’t open that file if I were you.
• Shouldn’t you be studying for the bar exam?

Handiness aside, contractions may provide advantages in terms of avoiding ambiguity and confusion of meaning.  Compare the last example above with its un-contracted variant:

Should you not be studying for the bar exam?

What is this sentence saying now?  In its “formal” configuration, it can almost be read with an emphasis on the word not, thus losing its suggestive quality and taking on a feebler, more inquisitive character.  Such an emphasis might also suggest (more strongly than it ought) that the writer has already come to a conclusion about whether the reader should be studying.  And we can’t fix this problem simply by getting rid of not, because the resulting interrogatory becomes far too general and loses context.  Furthermore, assuming we really want to retain the original meaning and posturing significance of the sentence, we can’t just turn the question into an imperative assertion (i.e., You should be studying for the bar exam), as that would strip the admonition of its subtlety.

I would love to provide you with scores of these examples, but I can’t at the moment—because I should be studying for the bar exam.  In any event, it should be clear that a contraction is sometimes the clearest way, grammatically speaking, to present something to the reader.

The next point is that contractions can also help avoid frustrating the reader, particularly in necessarily complex sentences.   Because of its distinct typographical profile, a contraction prevents our accidental failure to read an important standalone word that forms part of that its phrase.  Consider the following passages:

Unlike the person retarded from birth, the traumatic brain injury defendant will not receive an exemption from the death penalty under Louisiana law after the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled that the onset of impairment must occur before the age of eighteen to fall under the definition of mental retardation.  [Vidisha Barua Worley, From the Legal Literature, 46 Criminal Law Bulletin, art. 6 (2010).]

The firm will not accept an engagement from another client in the specified situations “unless we believe that our representation of that other client will not have an adverse effect on the exercise of our independent professional judgment on your behalf in the matters in which we represent you.”  [Michael J. Dell, Ethical Considerations in the Representation of Multiple Clients, in Practising Law Institute, PLI Ethics Programs - Summer 2010, at 275, 309 (2010).]

Note how a very important word—not—is buried in the middle of each of these sentences, sometimes more than once.  If you read either of these passages and happen to miss the “not,” the meaning of the text threatens to be reversed, and you quickly find yourself frustrated and confused, scrambling to re-read the sentence in order to make absolutely sure you know what’s going on.

The reason a contraction might be desirable in these situations is that it would provide a natural emphasis on the entire verb concept, which militates against reading one of the concepts (not) out of the sentence.  I call this a “natural emphasis” because the human eye is more aware of text containing non-letter markings—particularly those with contrasting angles or curvatures, like the apostrophe in the word won’t.  Typographers have recognized as much, and thus try to design apostrophes and quotation marks that are figured enough to get your attention but not so ornate as to distract you needlessly.  Anyhow, if we are more likely to pick up on words containing apostrophes, we are less likely to misread (or fail to read) the crucial verb concept if it is presented in a contraction.

Yet remarkably, as I hinted above, contractions can also be used to de-emphasize the verb concept they embody, allowing the eye to embrace the material surrounding the verb rather than getting hung up on a choppy, multisyllabic verb phrase to which the author doesn’t wish to draw attention.  Consider the following sentence by Eugene Volokh, who comes to mind as one of the authors who makes good use of contractions to maintain an appropriate grammatical mood and to create succinct and understandable prose:

And [even racially discriminatory] groups generally don’t pose the problems that have historically justified antidiscrimination law: expressive associations that have an expressive reason to discriminate offer only a small fraction of all the opportunities that are available to prospective members, and thus don’t risk systematically denying members of one group a livelihood, an opportunity to find shelter, or an education.  [Eugene Volokh, Freedom of Expressive Association and Government Subsidies, 58 Stanford Law Review 1919, 1927 (2006).]

Notice how the author’s focus in that sentence (unlike the emphasis in this one) is not on saying whether something “does” or “does not” do something.  His main objective is to give certain groups a certain legally significant characterization.  His use of the word don’t prevents the reader from ascribing unintended significance to the stiff, repetitive emphasis that would be presented by two same-sentence instances of the words do not.

In summary, it is not without reason that Rule 1.2(b) of the Texas Law Review’s Manual on Usage and Style advises us that although contractions “are less formal than spelled-out words,” they nevertheless “may be employed to good effect . . . .  No firm rule governs their use; simply know your audience and trust your ear.”