![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
regshoeThis post was inspired by three things: first, bookhobbit's excellent post on contractions in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, second, luzula posting a searchable ebook of Flight of the Heron and, finally, my intuition when writing and reading Flight of the Heron fic that a canon-typical style should avoid using too many contractions, because the book itself doesn't. Was I right?
Having done some investigating, the short answer is yes and no: Broster does use contractions fairly often, but she usually prefers not to contract phrases that could be contracted, and does so significantly less than a typical modern author would.
I started by doing a quick, non-exhaustive search for contractions in the text of the novel. Here's what I found: this shows all the contractions used ten or more times, with the number of uses of the corresponding uncontracted phrase for each one and the ratio between them.
Also of interest are contractions which were never used—here are all the ones with more than fifty uses of the uncontracted phrase: he'd (471 he had), couldn't (102 could not), who'd (70 who had), you've (65 you have), wouldn't (62 would not).
There are quite a number of contractions, then, but the uncontracted phrases are used more often. Only one, I'll/I will, is contracted more often than not, and if we include the never-contracted phrases, contractions are used on just 13% of the occasions they could be.
The numbers in the above table gave me another idea. Broster's most-used contraction relative to the uses of the uncontracted phrase is I'll, whereas her most-avoided is he'd. Now, Flight of the Heron is written in the third person past tense and mostly from the point of view of male characters, so we'd expect to get a lot of he had in the narration, whereas I will is basically only ever going to appear in dialogue. The rest of the table bears this out: all the contractions used are in either the present or future tenses or the first person, all of which we'd only expect to occur in dialogue, whereas all but one of the never-used contractions are in the past tense and so would be expected more often in narration.
To test this I had a closer look at the top five contractions: 'tis, I'll, don't, I'm and that's. Of the 197 total uses of these, 192 are in dialogue; four are in writing by the characters and one is in a character's directly quoted thoughts—none are in the narration.
Conclusions so far, then: some contractions in dialogue, but not many, and virtually none in the narration.
When searching for those most-used contractions I also looked at whose dialogue they were being used in. Side characters who speak in written-out vernacular dialect (mostly Scots, but the nice bit of Yorkshire dialect from Mr Fosdyke contains a high concentration) tend to use contractions more often than others, including cool exotic ones like thou'rt. As for the main characters, Ewen uses many more contractions than Keith: of those 192 contractions occurring in dialogue, 46 are Ewen's and only 21 are Keith's. Of course, this might just be because Ewen has more dialogue than Keith, so I did a quick search for phrases like 'Keith said' to check for this—but after correcting for the number of times each character's name appears in dialogue tags, Ewen still uses contractions more than twice as often as Keith. I suspect this may have to do with the formality of the setting: a lot of Ewen's dialogue is spoken to his family and friends, in a context where he might be more informal, whereas much of Keith's dialogue is spoken to fellow officers, superiors and enemies, to whom we might expect him to speak more formally.
I then looked at how Flight of the Heron compares to other books, concentrating on one contraction, don't—one of Broster's most-used.bookhobbit uses Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman as an example of a 'typical' modern contemporary novel: it has 32 don'ts for every do not, a much higher ratio than Flight of the Heron's 0.37. I was also interested in how Flight of the Heron compares to contemporary books written in the 1920s, and to books from the 1740s, when it's set. Here are the results:
So Flight of the Heron not only uses don't much less than a modern book, it also does so substantially less than contemporary novels from the 1920s—in fact, even less than novels from the 1740s, although it's closer to these than to anything else. (It does, however, use don't much more than Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell or the novels of Jane Austen, for whichbookhobbit also gives numbers—I guess the Regency period in particular hates contractions?)
So there you go! I hope this was interesting; I, for one, intend to put this nerdery to good use by writing a 100,000 word slow-burn slash fic in which the contraction ratio for each chapter is carefully calibrated to reflect the growing closeness and informality of the relationship between the characters, as well as how much time each of them has spent in Yorkshire recently.
bookhobbit's excellent post on contractions in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, second, luzula posting a searchable ebook of Flight of the Heron and, finally, my intuition when writing and reading Flight of the Heron fic that a canon-typical style should avoid using too many contractions, because the book itself doesn't. Was I right?Having done some investigating, the short answer is yes and no: Broster does use contractions fairly often, but she usually prefers not to contract phrases that could be contracted, and does so significantly less than a typical modern author would.
I started by doing a quick, non-exhaustive search for contractions in the text of the novel. Here's what I found: this shows all the contractions used ten or more times, with the number of uses of the corresponding uncontracted phrase for each one and the ratio between them.
| Contraction | Uses of contraction | Uses of uncontracted phrase | Contraction:uncontracted ratio |
| I'll (I will) | 53 | 48 | 1.10 |
| he'll (he will) | 13 | 19 | 0.68 |
| 'tis (it is) | 54 | 114 | 0.47 |
| that's (that is AND that has) | 25 | 46 | 0.54 |
| there's (there is AND there has) | 21 | 52 | 0.40 |
| don't (do not) | 36 | 102 | 0.37 |
| you'll (you will) | 24 | 86 | 0.28 |
| I'd (I had) | 17 | 67 | 0.25 |
| I'm (I am) | 32 | 185 | 0.17 |
| it's (it is AND it has) | 21 | 124 | 0.17 |
| he's (he is AND he has) | 16 | 115 | 0.14 |
| 'twas (it was) | 11 | 378 | 0.03 |
| TOTAL | 323 | 1336 | 0.24 |
Also of interest are contractions which were never used—here are all the ones with more than fifty uses of the uncontracted phrase: he'd (471 he had), couldn't (102 could not), who'd (70 who had), you've (65 you have), wouldn't (62 would not).
There are quite a number of contractions, then, but the uncontracted phrases are used more often. Only one, I'll/I will, is contracted more often than not, and if we include the never-contracted phrases, contractions are used on just 13% of the occasions they could be.
The numbers in the above table gave me another idea. Broster's most-used contraction relative to the uses of the uncontracted phrase is I'll, whereas her most-avoided is he'd. Now, Flight of the Heron is written in the third person past tense and mostly from the point of view of male characters, so we'd expect to get a lot of he had in the narration, whereas I will is basically only ever going to appear in dialogue. The rest of the table bears this out: all the contractions used are in either the present or future tenses or the first person, all of which we'd only expect to occur in dialogue, whereas all but one of the never-used contractions are in the past tense and so would be expected more often in narration.
To test this I had a closer look at the top five contractions: 'tis, I'll, don't, I'm and that's. Of the 197 total uses of these, 192 are in dialogue; four are in writing by the characters and one is in a character's directly quoted thoughts—none are in the narration.
Conclusions so far, then: some contractions in dialogue, but not many, and virtually none in the narration.
When searching for those most-used contractions I also looked at whose dialogue they were being used in. Side characters who speak in written-out vernacular dialect (mostly Scots, but the nice bit of Yorkshire dialect from Mr Fosdyke contains a high concentration) tend to use contractions more often than others, including cool exotic ones like thou'rt. As for the main characters, Ewen uses many more contractions than Keith: of those 192 contractions occurring in dialogue, 46 are Ewen's and only 21 are Keith's. Of course, this might just be because Ewen has more dialogue than Keith, so I did a quick search for phrases like 'Keith said' to check for this—but after correcting for the number of times each character's name appears in dialogue tags, Ewen still uses contractions more than twice as often as Keith. I suspect this may have to do with the formality of the setting: a lot of Ewen's dialogue is spoken to his family and friends, in a context where he might be more informal, whereas much of Keith's dialogue is spoken to fellow officers, superiors and enemies, to whom we might expect him to speak more formally.
I then looked at how Flight of the Heron compares to other books, concentrating on one contraction, don't—one of Broster's most-used.
bookhobbit uses Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman as an example of a 'typical' modern contemporary novel: it has 32 don'ts for every do not, a much higher ratio than Flight of the Heron's 0.37. I was also interested in how Flight of the Heron compares to contemporary books written in the 1920s, and to books from the 1740s, when it's set. Here are the results:| Book | Year of publication | don't:do not ratio |
| The Flight of the Heron by D. K. Broster | 1925 | 0.37 |
| Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman | 1990 | 32 |
| Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf | 1925 | 2.0 |
| The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie | 1920 | 1.8 |
| Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding | 1742 | 1.1 |
| Clarissa by Samuel Richardson | 1748 | 1.1 |
So Flight of the Heron not only uses don't much less than a modern book, it also does so substantially less than contemporary novels from the 1920s—in fact, even less than novels from the 1740s, although it's closer to these than to anything else. (It does, however, use don't much more than Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell or the novels of Jane Austen, for which
bookhobbit also gives numbers—I guess the Regency period in particular hates contractions?)So there you go! I hope this was interesting; I, for one, intend to put this nerdery to good use by writing a 100,000 word slow-burn slash fic in which the contraction ratio for each chapter is carefully calibrated to reflect the growing closeness and informality of the relationship between the characters, as well as how much time each of them has spent in Yorkshire recently.
no subject
Date: Apr. 4th, 2020 06:48 pm (UTC)