I'm a book editor (Apress), and this subject often comes up. While many
technical writing style guides shun the use of contractions, I think the
perception of being too informal or confusing to non-native English
speakers is rather outdated, and believe contractions improve
readability because the lack thereof results in a somewhat robotic flow.
Jason
Sean Coates wrote: Ford, Mike wrote:
On 05 July 2006 12:48, Nuno Lopes wrote:
No way!!!!
We cannot start breaking translators' work. Anyway, what's the
problem with contractions? When I studied English (British) I
learned that contractions weren't so formal, but they aren't
wrong per se.
Any English native speaker correct me if I'm wrong.
As a former long-time technical editor, I'd say you're not wrong
but it very much depends on context and meaning. In this case, I'd
agree with the change as it shifts the emphasis of the sentence on
to the very important "not", thus making it harder to misread the
sentence. It's also a fairly formal definition of the return
value, so a contraction is (slightly) less good on that score too.
As a current technical/copy editor, I also agree that contractions
aren't (are not!) bad.
In fact, I think that they add to the manual by making it more
readable and they improve flow. The magazine is less formal than the
manual, but they're similar in many ways, and I'm for contractions.
S
