Can’t stop, won’t stop – why this copywriter has no intention of abandoning his contractions
There have been many unpleasant, and not entirely unfair, remarks directed at Michael Gove during his career. He will doubtless be relieved to know that the only one I intend to repeat is unlikely to see the Conservative MP beat himself to death with his own frozen tears.
Gove, throughout his political meanderings, has often been referred to sneeringly as a didact. A zeal for sharing knowledge, as any schoolboy will tell you, is never anything but bothersome. But to do so with such unconcealed condescension is most usually the first step in a process that typically ends in a substantial thrashing.
Last week, Gove issued a memo instructing Ministry of Justice officials on the path to satisfactory grammar. Amongst his not-exactly-unreasonable pleas, he urged them to never start a sentence with ‘however’ and look to use (with more than a splash of the literalist’s indignant spittle) ‘sorry to read’ as a tiresome substitute for ‘sorry to hear’.
But amongst these edicts (and the perhaps disproportionately unkind reception – it has, after all, been pointed out that Gove’s conventions are not too dissimilar from Orwell’s) it was his call to abandon contractions that truly made my single typing finger shudder like a jabbed eel. I don’t, as in I do not, concur.
Perhaps unusually for a copywriter, I’ve never had a moment’s bother with the question of contractions. Even for the most somber or oppressive briefs, not once has a client taken offence at the abbreviated form. And these are the same clients who will cheerfully ask me to find no less than twelve more exciting ways to say, sigh, ‘exciting’.
Contractions are essential in a business than endlessly (if not always intelligently) pursues a sense of conversational English. Human conversation, particularly between transacting parties, is often at its most effective when the distance between ‘Point: A’ and ‘Point: Thanks Very Much’ is simple and short.
And if brevity is the bones of copywriting, then relevance is the belly-filling meat. Relevance can often be interpreted, in part, through a host of other rather important Rs – real, relatable, recognisable. If the voice that is selling you a delightful new cheddar sounds less like someone who has tasted the cheese than someone who has been hired to construct the cheese’s holistic brand architecture, then you’re as likely to trust as they are to persuade.
I’m not saying that contractions single handedly bridge the gap between consumer and character, but they are a remarkably easy first correction to make in a message that sounds, what we would politely describe as, insincere.
Of course, I’m not arguing for the universal application of contractions. Discarding one technique unreservedly in favour of the other is detrimental in whichever direction it marches. There are times when the full expression feels grander, more elegant or simply just a welcome break from all the damn apostrophes.
Grammar, much like knife fighting, is an ‘each to their own’ sport, as well as an environment where being over-certain about our own correctness invariably ends in a broth of loathing and tantrums. Mr Gove is more than welcome to his views and habits. However, he’s not persuaded me.
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