Sunday, June 3, 2007

Inklings and Contractions

I have been checking out Walter Burek's Inklings for about a week now. He almost invariably has something intelligent and helpful to say, and has a link or two to share as well. I can't help but think he's got a book of good writing quotes at home, becuase he comes up with some excellent and relevant ones for his weekly post. Then there was this post on editing your own writing that laid down some specific and realistic rules for evaluating your work.

This brings me back to somthing I was posting on a disucssion board the other day. The question was about using contractions (of which I'm a proponent) but my response was about tone. To me, purposely removing them where you naturally wrote them can make your writing stilted instead of authoritative. Also, spelling out the "not" inherent in many contractions tends to emphasize it, since it is so often neglected. Unless you're writing a technical manual or other instructions (where you want to ensure that people do not do something when they ought not to do it) you can feel free to sprinkle the contractions about naturally. That's it for today!


2 comments:








Anonymous

said...

Thanks you kindly for the nice review of Inklings. You're right about contractions -- we speak in contractions, why not write with them.

wgb





Unknown

said...

You're welcome, and thank *you* for swinging by!