Contractions

Version 1.24 by Lizzie Bruce on 2019/12/05 18:37

Following this helps:

people in a hurry – if you read something quickly you can get it wrong if it's not clear
people who are stressed – if you're anxious it's hard to comprehend things
people who are multi-tasking – if you're distracted it's easier to misread something
cognitive impairments – spelled out words take less mental effort to understand

Guidelines

Many organisations encourage using contractions, as they make content more conversational. Others are reluctant to because of the informal tone. We're mainly concerned with usability. Some types of contractions cause issues.

1. Avoid negative contractions.

2. Simple positive contractions may be fine.

3. Possessive nouns may be fine.

4. Avoid conditional contractions.

Usability evidence: contractions

1. Avoid negative contractions.

Like shouldn't, can’t and don’t. Research shows that many users:

find negative contractions difficult to read
misread them as the opposite of what they say

2. Simple positive contractions may be fine.

Like you'll, we'll, we're, they're, it's, I'll, there'll, there's.

We have not found any existing usability studies that show positive contractions cause or do not cause difficulties for users. We would like to test this with users.

3. Possessive nouns may be fine.

Like "my organisation's ethos", "your cat's tail", "the suitcase's weight".
There's no usability evidence against possessive nouns at the moment. We would like to test this with users.

While we're here, small grammar point: you use an apostrophe on "it is" as a contraction, for example "it's sunny" but you do not when "it" is part of a possessive noun, so "its ethos".