Let's say we have a sentence as shown below
"Why can't we use X to do Y?"
How would you rewrite it to avoid using a contraction? Typically, we can replace "can't" by "cannot" or "can not;" for instance
- "She can't find her keys"
- "She cannot find her keys"
- "She can not find her keys"
Applied to the first example this would result in
- "Why cannot we use X to do Y?"
Would the following work?
- "Why can we not use X to do Y?"
For some reason, this sounds a bit awkward to me (however, I am a non-native speaker, and I don't really trust my gut feeling ;)).
So, wow would you make sentences like "Why can't we use X to do Y?" sound more elegant given that you want to avoid using a contraction?