The Use of Contractions in Historical Writing

Yes, people used them in both speech and writing in the late seventeenth century. You might look at prose from the period, including verbatim court records.

You can always go to the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) and find out when a word was first used (in writing, anyway).

Duped said:

Is it considered part of good writing to use them in the modern day, even if the historical period is late seventeenth century? I am not sure if people spoke like that in those days.

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If you're writing about the seventeenth century and you're not sure how they spoke-- I suggest you start doing some research! At the very least you should be reading literature of the period.

Ah but literature of the period is far from how people actually spoke at the time. I LOVE it when contemporary authors write historical stuff with contractions etc (I mean all within reason, but writing period dialogue with a natural flavour is so not only a breath of fresh air but very interesting). And I mean, let's not forget that 'tis, and 'twere etc are contractions of their own kind.

Hi Duped --

Writers do not write how speech actually sounds.

Dialog which appears on the page as
"Do you have a jar of honey?'
may actually sound like
"'Dchu h'vva jarra hunny?"
or
"Dooya haf a joirra hoony?"
or
"D'yal huv a jura hoona?"

The writer doesn't write phonetically.
The writer uses standard spelling,
and the reader creates, within his own mind, character voices.

Spelling is not an approximation of how speech sounds. It's a convention for representing speech.


OK. On to contractions.

Before C20, the words 'I am' -- two words, no contraction -- were most generally used to represent that vast constellation of sounds --
"Ahm' and Ah ahm' and 'Ah yam' and 'Ay Yam' and 'Ahrm' and 'Ermm'
that means first person nominative and the verb 'to be'.

It isn't that folks generally pronounced this in two syllables -- or in one syllable.
It isn't that this pronunciation changed at any particular time.
It is that the convention, especially in C19, was to write, 'I am', regardless of what was actually said.

In C20, convention changed.
It became the custom to differentiate between a slurred pronunciation and a pronunciation that breaks into two syllables.
Since a pronunciation that breaks into two syllable is most often emphasizing one word or the other
or is part of a careful and precise speech pattern,
using 'I am" has acquired specific connotations that it did not have in, for instance, C19.

Should you use contractions?

By using 'I am' exclusively you are not more accurately representing historical speech,
you're just using a historical convention for representing speech.

You do not 'sound' more like a speaker in 1870 or 1710.
(Some of whom used one syllable and some of whom used two and we'll never really know who was doing which.)
You just sound like a Victorian or Georgian writer.
(This of course may be what you want to do, in which case I say 'cool' and wave enthusiastically from the sidelines.).

If you use contractions ...
ISTM you are just as likely to be 'accurate' in your actual sounds.
And using contractions in a C20/21 manner will communicatemore clearly and effectively with your audience
who are expecting to read a C21 author, using C21 conventions, when they look at the copyright date.

I tend not to use contractions when I write my medieval historic fantasies because I just like how it sounds. More formal.

Just to follow up on what others have said, I think eliminating contractions (and using formal, stilted or outdated language in dialogue) will serve to remind the reader that the story is set in a distant time.

I think using modern language and contractions will make the characters more accessible to modern readers, and de-emphasize the time difference. (A good example of this in film is Sophia Coppola's Marie Antoinette. The writer and director used modern slang and pronunciation to emphasize the fact that Marie was just a teenager of her time, albeit a very rich one. )

I'm a little torn on this.

On the one hand, I want to be authentic.

On the other hand, I want to be authentic.

I don't write to follow the conventions of a time period. I write in my style and if the sentence flows best with a contraction, I use a contraction. That's authentic. What would be unauthentic is if I copied the writing styles of the 1750s simply because my book was set in the 1750s. I write in my own voice and I'm pretty sure that's not terribly stilted...because it's natural to me.

On a related note...I'm not altogether averse to the idea of incorporating a bit of slang (usually a swear or two) into a story set in another time. Why? I don't write in historical settings where the people spoke English. So I figure everything I write is a translation. And people in Greece in the fourth century BC definitely had a word for fuck, huh? So why not use it if that's what I mean, if that's the word the speaker would use? Or shit or ass or whatever.

I made the offensive words white because this was an intellectual post, man, and I hate using symbols.

This is just my experience, but when an auithor does something like not use contractions, it makes me hyper-focused on any other mistakes there may be in word choice or style. When there are contractions, it lets me relax and just read.

JoniBGoode said:

(A good example of this in film is Sophia Coppola's Marie Antoinette. The writer and director used modern slang and pronunciation to emphasize the fact that Marie was just a teenager of her time, albeit a very rich one. )

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Good grief, was it as awful as it sounds?

It depends entirely on the characters and what is right for them. If I have a pompous, somewhat portenous character then I would limit my use of contractions as I'd want him to be more formal but if I'm writing for a scullery maid then I might litter her dialogue with contractions.

For me a blanket rule of no contractions results in dialogue that sounds cod-Historical rather than historically accurate.

I use contractions as a way of differentiating characters without having to overly use dialog tags. One character almost never uses contractions - he has a very formal mode of speech consistent with his back story. Another nearly always does so. It makes him sound a bit more relaxed and keeps everyone from just sounding like me.

That being said, I've had to rearrange some sentences because they just don't sound right without contractions. After all, no matter when the story is set I'm writing for the modern reader.

I believe the aristocrats were more formal in their speech and found contractions vulgar.

It ain’t easy to write that way!

17th

I think it's best to read a goodly amount of fiction written in the 17th century, rather than reading books about language. How did those writers handle it?

Shadow_Ferret said:

Good grief, was it as awful as it sounds?

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Actually I thought it was brilliant.

It got panned by a lot of critics becasue it wasn't the cliche historical drama that they expected, but the technique cleared the way for the story to take center stage, instead of the time period being the main focus.

In other words, it was about Marie, not about France just before the revolution.

Going out on a large limb here, I think Marie Antoinette will be recognized in 20 years as introducing an entirely new way to tell stories set in earlier eras.

Sigh!

Duped has already been told about diary junction, 17thC diaries on line, and their use of contractions in the History section. She was encouraged to use contractions.

To repeat: Contractions were used in the 17thC.
We can't hope to do more than give a taste of the language used in the 17thC by using words and structures we know were used.

We do have modern readers who cannot read comfortably when every character, from stable boy to Lord Nutty, talks in full flowing English without contractions.

The key to how many contractions a person would use is their character.
Know your characters. ‘Hear’ them talk.

Lord Nutty might be a country squire with a strong regional accent and almost dialect speech.

He might be a member of the King's Court, lacing his polite Courtly English with French expression as a compliment to the French Queen.

He might be a well educated, wealthy, younger son reading Latin and Greek, and using Latinate English and formal structures.

He might be a young fashionable man about town, always in trouble, with fast horses and gambling debts and expensive whores. He will lace his speech with stable and gambling and even thieves' term (cant) to shock his family and their friends.

Until you know your characters that well, and 'hear' them speak, the question of using contractions in historicals is really a waste of time. What is more important is what would the characters say and how would they say it.

You've already been told that contractions were used and are more acceptable to modern readers, that includes editors too. Asking the question here in the Novel section isn't going to give you a different answer to what we've already told you, but it surely pisses us off!

In my romantic fantasy, I had a heroine from our 'modern' time end up in a fairy tale world with princes and kings and warriors and chivalry. She used contractions, they didn't. In scenes told in her PoV, I used contractions in the writing as well. In scenes from the hero or secondary characters' PoVs, I didn't use contractions (unless she was talking). I wanted to convey PoV and mindset without the reader having to consciously look for dialogue tags or wonder whose PoV it was.

One caution about using diaries and letters from past times - many contractions are purely for written use, and do not reflect the speech. If you're quoting a letter from the 1800s, for instance, someone signing himself 'y'r obd't servant' was making a conventional abbreviation that would be understood by his reader as 'your obedient servant'.
Plays are more useful, and there are plenty of plays from the 1700s, featuring characters of various standings in society. Watch out for verse plays, though, because the contractions may be there more to preserve metre than to reflect common speech. Did people actually say 'ne'er' and 'e'er'? I don't know.
-Barbara (who had way too much fun writing a bunch of heavily abbreviated 1600s diary entries)

Shadow_Ferret said:

Good grief, was it as awful as it sounds?

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The notion that a young royal,
raised in the most rigid, etiquette-bound courts that ever existed,
would speak 'slang' of any kind ...

Maria Theresa of Habsburg, Holy Roman Empress, Queen of Hungary, ArchDuchess of Austria
whelps a gum chewing Valley Girl ...

You may consider my mind boggled.

job have you seen the movie? it isn't quite like that.

Haven't seen the movie.
That's why I didn't say anything about the movie.
I can't make an intelligent assessment of it.

I commented instead on whether M.A. would have, (in, y'know, the real and historical world,) spoken in anything even remotely approaching 'slang'.


Still not commenting on this particular movie, but speaking of the movie business in general --

Movies are entertainment, not history texts.
It is unfair to complain that they are not accurate.
They are not trying to be accurate.

That said,
I deplore what I sometimes see as the inability of the average, (espcially American,) person to imagine that anyone could be radically different from himself. This lack of imagination is reflected in the entertainment industry.