As mouths go, it must be one of the most fabled of the century past. The lips, as widely parted as they could be, suggest the contours of a distended heart. There is an upper gallery of teeth, slightly imperfect, and glazed by spittle mingling with the crystal darts and droplets of a powerful jet of water issuing relentlessly from above the face. A mottled tongue is barricaded in by the lower gallery of teeth, almost as pinned by them to the floor of the mouth. It’s a sensual, importunate mouth, the sort that might belong to a popular diva giving new life to a favourite old tune from Sacha Distel or Gene Kelly; but instinctively we know –the mouth is so legendary – that this is not the case. Those are no raindrops falling on her head. And she’s not singin’, whether in the rain or anywhere else. She’s screaming in the shower of Bates Motel, screaming for dear life as the presiding matriarch of that decaying Gothic hostelry (or so we’re led to believe) remorselessly bears down upon her with an elongated knife, and to a very different, lethally staccato tune.

The real owner of the mouth, of course, is Janet Leigh, playing the part of the set-upon blonde in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1963). The actress lives on to this day (though legend has it that since the film she’s never been able to take another shower); and the famous image of her mouth is revived once more to adorn the jacket, back and front, of an exhilarating new book, The Hitchcock Murders (Faber), by the Australian expatriate writer, Peter Conrad.

How good is Shaw Neilson? The question has hung around ever since A.G. Stephens, publishing the poet’s first book, Heart of Spring, in 1919, prefaced it with comparisons to Shakespeare and Blake and declared this unknown to be the ‘first of Australian poets’. The claim provoked competitive jealousies in a possessive, parochial literary world and reviewers responded by insinuating doubts. The question remains: is Neilson the greatest Australian poet? For those who want literature to be a horse race, it is unsatisfactory that there is no declared winner, brandishing medal and loot. Neilson loved horses but he disliked the hold that the sporting mentality had over his fellow Australians – especially men. Yet like most writers he was anxious about his standing and, in his perfectionist’s concern to put his best foot forward, he probably contributed to his readers’ uncertainties. Difficulties with his singularity as a poet were compounded by Neilson’s circumstances, particularly the bad eyesight that made him dependent on others in preparing final versions of his work. That was part of a more general dependency on editors, critics, and supporters who had their own ideas of where they wanted to take him.

I’ve been trying to place love
in the exhibit for inspection
but there are fees to be perfected.

It isn’t difficult to establish conversational tone in writing. And since a column about language and usage ought to be a conversation, we’ll go for that tone. Let’s start with a workout for a current, overused device. There’ve been three of them before this sentence: four now. You’ll find them if you look (Five.) Yes, we’re looking at the conversational contraction, and it’s time to stop counting.

Time for a deep breath. That first paragraph obviously over­egged the pudding, but it was not too far away from what you are likely to find these days in chatty newspaper columns, or in serious newspaper commentary and argument. The main difference is that the negative contractions – ’can’t’, ‘don’t’, and so on – will be more strongly represented than in my playful sample.

It would be harsh, and erroneous, to insist that it is inherently wrong to use contractions in conversational prose. But the habit is getting out of hand. An eminent figure in Australian letters told me the other day he had encountered ‘needn’t’ve’ in a current Australian novel – not in a passage of direct speech. He was appalled, but another friend thinks he should not complain: he should be grateful that it was not ‘needn’t of.

The easiest thing to say about the habit is that it is a lazy path to conversational tone. Perhaps that does not matter much, but it is often also a form of intellectual fudging. ‘The chance is not likely to come again’ has an air of heavy finality. ‘The chance isn’t likely to come again’ is more genial in tone. But the opinion is the same. What does the writer want to do: make the call, or be nice?

And there we have it. Contraction-laden prose is so nice, so cosy, that you glide through it as easily as you let time drift while luxuriating in a warm bath, and with a similar result. Nothing registers. And that is not entirely consistent with the purpose of writing something down for others to read.