While many legal authorities say that contractions don’t belong in legal writing, Bryan Garner, a leading authority on legal writing, advocates their use as a way to make legal writing, including opinions and rules, less stuffy and more natural. I searched COCA for 77 contractions and their spelt-out counterparts (there are others, but life is short). Probably the most memorable/unusual was a woman having her first baby and contractions were never more than 10-7 mins apart. Persistent contractions that have no rhythm but are five-to-seven minutes apart or less should be reported to your physician or midwife.

For a list of words relating to Contractions, see the English contractions category of words in Wiktionary , the free dictionary. Do not use contractions in documents that serve very formal purposes, such as legal contracts, submissions to professional publications.

My real contractions felt like I had pulled a groin muscle, in that …