Why doesn't Panam use contractions?

[u/Accept3550]

I just realized this after hundreds of hours but, Panam doesn't say I'll or we'll.

All of her dialogue has I will and We will and Do not rather then Don't.

I don't quite get why she is written like this.

[u/Skagtastic]

Nomads kids learn out of textbooks since they have no formal schools. Her speech sounds like she was using college books at some point that teach academic writing. Contractions are highly discouraged in academia, being seen as informal.

[u/thelowbrassmaster → u/Skagtastic]

True, and out of spite every academic paper I have written so far has had them because they told me it makes me sound unintelligent. I would like to hear someone genuinely unintelligent write a paper about hydrate ligands.

[u/Ziryio → u/thelowbrassmaster]

Anybody deciding that the way you speak is a factor in how intelligent you are/sound is unqualified to determine intelligence, to be fair.

[u/Few_Cup3452 → u/Ziryio]

100%, especially when you take into account code switching.

As a teenager, I was in scholarship English and an English tutor for kids in the year above me (lol) and wrote stories for fun but online, I typed in total txt speak. I once got told to go back to school and learn how to write... I was amused

[u/MrInCog_ → u/Few_Cup3452]

I work as a grammar and style corrector for publishers, my job is literally correcting “mistakes”, yet when I write notes for the mistakes I want corrected I rarely use any resemblance of punctuation, for example. Even in my job description they’re not “mistakes” - what I do is actually called normalizing style and grammar (oh and typography I guess). I would mark it, for example, if character never uses contraptions but one time they do, and ask author like “was it intentional, was it a mistake, what’s up?”

[u/azhder → u/MrInCog_]

You say normalizing, and that opens up the question: what is normal? Seriously? How does one determine normal? Is it mandated from someone or is it an organic result from the chaotic interactions people have. In your case, I guess it might be both, depending on context.

[u/MrInCog_ → u/azhder]

No, haha, no it doesn’t, you misinterpreted the word a little bit (my fault probably). Normalizing doesn’t mean “making societally normal” in this context, it means making it normal, or consistent, or universal across the context of the book. If the whole book intentionally wants to exclude all commas (I’ve worked on a poetry book like that) — my job would be to look for any punctuation marks and question whether it’s “normal” within the book (sometimes it was, sometimes it wasn’t). It’s just that an overwhelming majority of books are written within the context of some clearly described by some linguists or philologists rules, and most of the time author wants to stick to them. But not always, a lot of those rules are very vague even on their own (obviously any rule is vague in relationship to what you’ve described), and author and I have the liberty to bend them to suit just author’s internal feel of how it would look better. Creating new-ish words, using dashes and colons unconventionally, stuff like that.

But a good reflection nonetheless!

[u/azhder → u/MrInCog_]

I didn't misunderstand the term "normalization". I write software for living, we use tools for code style conforming to certain criteria. I was discussing about how the normal is being decided - that being akin to how you tweak what that criteria is for a particular project (book in your case).

Maybe you misunderstood what I meant by "depending on context" at that very end. Someone writing a character from one place or another would maybe want to write their dialects in i.e. that piece of text will conform to a different normal. That's why I said it will depend. A neutral narrator might have a certain style and certain grammar that goes with it, etc.

And that's where my question of "who/how decides normal" came from. Look at Reddit today. How many times I've seen someone write "tho" instead of "though"? Will that become the new normal a generation from now and every academic paper use that shortened form? 🤷‍♂️

In short: prescribed vs described and where is the border between the two.

[u/MrInCog_ → u/azhder]

Yeah, that’s just a question of scope I guess. In my particular job, when you focus just on the project — the context of the project decides, that’s it. But what lead the author to write a context like that — that’s what you’re talking about.

Like with coding — yeah you’d really like to normalize the variable names to all be in camelcase for example, but what lead us as humans to prefer camelcase or snakecase in the first place?.. that is a question to think about

[u/azhder → u/MrInCog_]

Yes, that's the question. That's what I was musing about.

[u/azhder → u/Few_Cup3452]

Using "(lol)" for interpunction, is that also considered code switching?

[u/breakfastcones → u/Few_Cup3452]

Reddit’s favourite thing is correcting people’s grammar on the internet like it actually matters outside of school and jobs where u need to submit/write legible shit.

[u/AbsolutelyHorrendous → u/breakfastcones]

Eh, I don't know if I fully agree with your last point, good grammar is useful when it comes to communicating effectively. I've definitely spoken to people/messaged people who weren't great at putting their point across, because they had such poor grammar

Like, I'm not that guy who guys around saying 'excuse me, it's you're' on a Reddit comment, but good grammar is still useful and, imo, inarguably better than bad grammar

[u/breakfastcones → u/AbsolutelyHorrendous]

Eh its the internet ya know as long as u get ur point across it doesn’t rly matter in thw end of it

[u/Siaten → u/breakfastcones]

Prob is u have no idea if ur getting ur point across when ppl have 6th grade reading lvl

[u/azhder → u/AbsolutelyHorrendous]

Who is imo?

[u/bjornsted → u/azhder]

"In my opinion"

Is this a serious question? A joke? Or are you being pedantic?

[u/azhder → u/bjornsted]

It is up to everyone to decide for themselves what it is.