I'm not sure if you'll know the answer to this, but for the regency era, how common are contractions in letters and speech? Not the "Wm." for William kind, but your standard "couldn't," "wouldn't" and "shouldn't?" Thanks!
All common English contractions did exist by the Regency period. However, there is very limited period documentation or scholarly research as to whether they were viewed as "proper" English or not at the time.
Contractions were first used in the English language sometime in the last half of the 16th century, and by the late 17th and early 18th centuries were approaching what most people today would probably consider over-use.
By the time the Regency era rolled around however, many older uses of contractions had already fallen, or were in the midst of falling, out of favor. 'Tis, 'twas, ne'er, e'er, e'en, tho', thro', etc., were mostly confined to poetry by the early 19th century (though 'tis seems to have hung on a little bit longer than the others).
The last half of the 18th century had also already seen the almost complete disappearance of the most common use of English contractions in the 17th and early 18th centuries - using 'd in place of -ed - as seen here in an example from the 1736...
The frequency of use of contractions in the Regency period specifically, seems to have varied greatly from person to person. Jane Austen herself used very few contractions in her novels compared to some of her contemporaries. Couldn't, wouldn't and shouldn't do not appear at all in Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility or Emma, and all other contractions were used very sparingly.
In P&P, I counted one appearance of "I'm", one of "you'll", one "won't", two "can't"s, three "shan't"s and six "don't"s.
I compared this to Evelina, by Frances Burney (published in 1778) which (just in Volume One) includes: 14 occurrences of can't, 4 of won't, 35 of don't (vs only 15 of 'do not') and 11 of shan't (3 spelled shan't and 8 sha'n't).
Though couldn't, wouldn't and shouldn't all appear in Evelina as well (in an archaic forms which included a space between the modal verb and n't: could n't, would n't, should n't), I did notice they are used much more by lower class characters than by upper.
There seems to be some evidence that negative contractions (those ending in n't) began to be considered improper English in the latter half of the 18th century, and subsequently generally fell out of favor with the upper classes.
The Grammatical Wreath... by Alexander Bicknell, published in 1790, specifically cautions against using contractions in correspondence with social superiors.
"And be careful in not omitting any letter belonging to the words you write; as, I've, can't, don't, shou'd, wou'd, &c. instead of I have, cannot, do not, should, would; for such contractions not only appear disrespectful and too familiar, but discover ignorance and impudence."
This very interesting paper (which you can view in full if you have a free JSTOR account) analyzes the grammatical trends found through 50 years (1730s-1780s) of the correspondence of writer Elizabeth Montagu. The author marked a significant falloff in the use of negative contracted modal and auxiliary verbs over the course of Montagu's letters. In the 1730s Montagu used un-contracted negatives 62% of the time and contracted 38%, but by the 1780s Montagu used no contacted negatives at all.
Granted these are only the letters of a single person and, as the author notes, could have many other explanations (age, change in social class, familiarity with the correspondent, etc.), it does seem to reflect what I've personally observed in writing from this period.
So the answer to your question is - yes, contractions existed and yes, they were in fairly common use - with the asterisk that how they were viewed by society is not terribly well documented for the Regency period.
So I'd personally say feel free to use them in any Regency era stories you may be writing, but do so sparingly with very proper or upper class characters.
If you're aiming for very authentic period flavor, you could also try throwing in some contractions that have fallen out of use over the past two centuries - shan't, mustn't, needn't, mayn't, etc. I'd especially recommend using 'shan't' in place of 'shouldn't' where appropriate, and also remembering that if you're using 'can not' instead of 'can't' it is always one word - cannot.
One thing that is period authentic, but I won't personally recommend to any Regency era writers (unless you want to throw some meta commentary on the chaos that is the English language into an epistolary) - is that no one really agreed where to put the apostrophe in wouldn't/couldn't/shouldn't until well into the 19th century. It's very common to see the n't separate as in the examples from Evelina, but I've also seen wou'd'n't, would'nt, wou'd'nt, etc. etc. etc., sometimes multiple different ways within a single paragraph.
Hope some of that was helpful. I had fun digging into it!
jimmyeatworldofficial
2087
yousharknotpass
prguitarman
discoholicmusic
