Grammar girl here. A listener named Alex asked, quote,

what's the history of the contraction in English usage?

I just heard an interview with the Cohen brothers about the movie True Grit.

They pointed out that they were at pains to avoid the use of contractions

for an authentic 1860's Western American setting.

I'm quote.

The Cohen brothers did say something like this.

In a Newsweek interview, they were asked, quote,

did people actually not talk without contractions at that time?

I'm quote.

And they answered, quote, we've been told that the language and all that

formality is faithful to how people talked in the period.

I'm quote.

Unfortunately, the Cohen brothers were misinformed.

Mark Lieberman of the linguistics blog, Language Log, found that the

original True Grit novel by Charles Portis contained both contracted

and uncontracted forms.

For comparison, however, Lieberman looked at two other novels, including Tom

Sawyer, published in 1876, and found that those novels were more likely

to include contractions than True Grit.

So there really is some contraction avoidance in the novel True Grit.

Maybe Portis wrote that way for purposes of characterization, Lieberman

...