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- In contemporary English, both “cannot” and “can not” are acceptable, though they’re generally used in different ways. The combined form, as you point out, is more common (Lexico, formerly Oxford Dictionaries Online, says it’s three times as common in the Oxford English Corpus).
www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2019/08/cannot.html
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Can’t is a contraction of cannot, and it’s best suited for informal writing. In formal writing and where contractions are frowned upon, use cannot. It is possible to write can not, but you generally find it only as part of some other construction, such as “not only . . . but also.”.
Mar 4, 2021 · Both cannot and can’t mean that a person or object does not have the ability to do something. They can also mean that someone does not have permission when can takes the place of may. However, you wouldn’t necessarily use them in the same contexts.
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Aug 2, 2019 · In contemporary English, both “cannot” and “can not” are acceptable, though they’re generally used in different ways. The combined form, as you point out, is more common (Lexico, formerly Oxford Dictionaries Online, says it’s three times as common in the Oxford English Corpus).
Can’t is a more informal way to say cannot, it is acceptable in most situations. Do not use contractions in scholarly, academic and formal business writing. The word cant has several meanings. First, cant might mean hypocritically pious talk, sanctimonious or self-serving talk.
Aug 20, 2012 · Generally, people use can't in speech and informal writing, and cannot or can not in formal writing or very formal speech. Also (as @Kris points out in a comment), cannot might be used when you need to carefully distinguish it from can't in speech.
The primary question at hand is, “Is cannot one word?” In most cases—say 99 percent of ordinary writing— cannot will appear as a single word. There are only rare circumstances that cannot should appear as two words—and most of these should probably be rewritten anyway (see below for more examples)
Feb 20, 2021 · To summarize the key points: Cannot is the proper negative form of “can.”. Can’t is a contraction of “cannot” often used in informal writing. Writing “can not” (i.e., as two separate words) is almost always an error, though, so keep an eye out for this in your work!
