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What is the consensus on this?

t-14orbust wrote:What is the consensus on this?

In any professional writing, my professors told me, "DO NOT DO IT!" Unless it is a quote.

Leaborb192 wrote:

t-14orbust wrote:What is the consensus on this?

In any professional writing, my professors told me, "DO NOT DO IT!" Unless it is a quote.

So I've been told, but that was mostly in regard to formal essays and I'm not sure how much a 'personal' statement qualifies as that. I've seen them in others' statements, so I was just wondering. I have no problem with getting rid of them though.

I doubt you'll get anything beyond personal opinions on this, but in my opinion you should keep it more formal. Obviously quotations would be an exception to this rule, but I think generally it will be a rare occasion where a contraction is the right call.

The only case I can imagine is if it's used intentionally to drive a point home. For instance, I used one contraction in my PS to add a softer humanity to a revelation I had. It just didn't sound right to say it in formal language. But it was the exception to a generally solid rule.

In case you want a little specificity on this, I was talking about explaining a death to a group of the guy's peers, and the sentence was,"'Bad luck' just wouldn't cut it."

I found this http://www.top-law-schools.com/archives ... =2&t=50098

Edited the rest of this post out

Sounds like a perfectly reasonable contraction to leave in. The difference between a PS and other formal writing is that voice and tone are infinitely more important in the PS. But, like using conjunctions at the beginning of sentences, they should be used sparingly.

Thanks for the input brother, you'll be one of the first unfortunate ones to get a PM of my PS.