In English, a contraction is a word formed by removing a letter or multiple letters from a longer word or phrase. The omitted letters are replaced by an apostrophe. For example, he’s is a contraction of he is, won’t is a contraction of will not, o’clock is a contraction of of the clock, and y’all is a contraction of you all.
Are contractions informal?
There is a longstanding superstition against using contractions in formal writing. While this is generally a good rule for very formal and solemn contexts, most of the time there’s no good reason to avoid contractions. Yes, they create a breezier, more speech-like tone, but there’s nothing improper about that. In fact, using the non-contracted versions can sound overformal.
For example, these major publications have no prohibitions against contractions in most of their stories:
His Nepali guide insists he won’t marry a village girl but vigorously defends the interests of his 13-year-old sister … [New York Times]
Outsourcing isn’t always the best option [Guardian]
Journalists had a difficult time holding Renner to account because he didn’t release the experts’ report until seconds before he held a news conference … [Montreal Gazette]
And these great writers see fit to use contractions freely in their work:
But the magistrate was half blind and half childish, so he couldn’t reasonably be expected to discern what other people did. [Charles Dickens]
Berkeley doesn’t deny matter, then; he simply tells us what it consists of. [William James]
What was the good, after all, of being a woman if one didn’t keep fresh, and cram one’s life with all sorts of views and experiments? [Virginia Woolf]
… And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill / Beside it, and there may be two or three / Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough. [Robert Frost]
There wasn’t a fat person to be seen. [Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle]
But couldn’t theatre dissolve the distinction between the truth of artifice and the truth of life? [Susan Sontag, Styles of Radical Will]
