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One good reason not to use contractions is if you plan to put your
documentation online. The punctuation (') can be easy to misread,
particularly with the miniscule fonts used on high-res displays. If
you can reduce the number of misreadings by even 5%, that's still
worth doing.
I've also read that contractions are difficult to translate or cause
problems for those whose native tongue isn't English; I don't believe
the former (if your translator can't understand translations, get one
who can), but the latter seems more probable, particularly for
non-Latin languages.
--Geoff Hart geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
#8^{)}
