Avoiding contractions

In academic writing, it is important to avoid using contractions as they take away from the professional tone of the writing. Contractions are those words that are the combination of two words (e.g. don’t, won’t, shouldn’t, he’s, she’d etc). These are fine in our day to day language, but not in academic writing. However, because we use them so frequently in our other communication, it is easy for them to sneak into our academic writing.

To avoid this, when proof-reading your assignment do a search for an apostrophe.

• On a PC: ctl+F

• On a Mac: command+F

This is a quick and simple way to find any contractions that have slipped through the cracks.