I'm not a grammar nazi, but "should of" is driving me up the wall.
this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
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You Should Know
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I know right, I know people make careless grammatical mistakes all the time, including me, which is completely fine but people outright thought that "should of" is correct and use it all the time starts to get annoying
Same! I rather see shoulda than should of.
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Nice one. Who’d’ve guessed.
😱 You are triggering my fear of more than 1 apostrophes in a word
Coulda, shoulda, woulda...
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Not wanting to be purposefully controversial, but language is a tool for communication and as long as it's understood by the target audience, then I'd say it was used effectively.
The English language doesn't have a governing body (unlike say French and Spanish) and so whatever we agree on is correct usage. "Grammatically incorrect" has long been a dog-whistle signifier for elitism (you don't have the expensive education to know what's correct) and racism (the local dialect that you speak isn't our 'prestige' version, therefore you are inferior) and I don't really like to see it. Even when those aren't your intentions when correcting people, it still rankles with me.
Not that I'd write 'should of' on my CV or anything, but it doesn't offend me any on an internet forum.
and as long as it's understood by the target audience
Duy'ou-ndarstend Diz?
Understanding written text is more difficult when the existing established conventions that impart meaning are ignored.
Sure, those conventions evolve over time, some errors are worse than others, and no one's going to write perfectly all the time. But that doesn't mean anything goes and the writer has no responsibility to write clearly and correctly.
Agree with you wholeheartedly
I perfectly understand "Duy’ou-ndarstend Diz?" but I really would not want to read this over and over again.
Of course, I don't aim to change everyone, you do you. I just want to use the opportunity to say there is a difference between "should have" and "should of".
I see your point, and in some way I agree myself. Language is always evolving, and the way English is spoken today is far off from what it was back in the day. And the way we use language tells a lot about a persons background and history. This is not something negative, this is personality and differences between people.
And it's not someone's job to change someone or everyone, but it should be accepted to correct when others are wrong. I for one like when people do this to me; I actually encourage my friends to do that to me. This is how I learn and develop my language, and should not be viewed as a negative. If I use language "wrong", I at least want to be aware of it so I can correct it if I feel the need. I think this should of been how more peoples think it about 😋
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Wait, my 6th grade English teacher was a racist? That explains a lot.
Thanks for the info about French and Spanish governing bodies. TIL
What I'm hearing is we need to set up some kind of formal governing body to properly enforce the grammar rules of English. Maybe Hugo boss could make some uniforms.
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Ha, "rankles". (✿☉｡☉)
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Typing "should of" is a sign of failing to understand the basics of English grammar.
Eh, it's just shifting of how written work is relfective our spoken word. It's pretty rare for me to use a stronger "ah" sound when saying "would have" most of the time defaulting to a softer schwa sound, which sounds almost exactly how how "of" sounds. English has been changing and evolving for centuries. There's even major epochs like the great vowel shift. Hell if Shakespeare were around today and making the drastic changes to the english language like he did back then he'd be crucified by internet prescriptivists for using English improperly.
If you'd like something a bit more modern, Mark Twain broke english rules all the time in his writings and he's considered one of, if not, the greatest American writers.
I'm sorry but it doesn't fully work here. 'of' phonetically should not be spelled with a 'f', so they are already using a word that is not pronounced as it is written, might as well use "would've", which removes the part that isn't pronounced as it was traditionally "ha-", but at least it's still correct.
They use 'of' because they don't understand (or pay attention to) the grammar of what they're saying.
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I’m certainly no grammar freak and English also isn’t my native language but this deives me insane… Same with your vs you’re… it’s soooo easy…
Same here. I think some people just make it a habit to type/write wome words incorrectly.
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People who say "should of" makes me want to loose my mind
Right on queue.
Crazy thing is, it’s getting widespread acceptance, and will probably accepted as grammatically correct in a few years.
A bit like how putting "would" in a third conditional if-clause has become standard in US English ("We wouldn't have been late if we would have taken a taxi").
I know language evolves but it doesn't stop my left eye from twitching whenever I hear it.
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language is full of idiosyncrasies like this (my favorite is an ekename -> a nekename -> a nickname. see Wikipedia). it's perfectly conceivable that should have would be fully re-analyzed in speech like that, so the proper form of the verb to have would become of after should
Same deal with the word "Apron". It started out as napron, so people would say a napron which turned into an apron
shoulda
Golly, I should of known that
- Golly, eye should of noun that
Even as a non native speaker "should of" feels really weird to me, it just doesn't make sense. Is this a mistake English speakers do as well?
Pretty sure it's actually one of those mistakes that is made more often by native speakers than non-native speakers
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I had a professor who would use “should of” in speech, probably because he read it so much and internalized it as being correct.
Was he 12?
should of is probably a product of phonetic typing (those who just type the letters that match the internal audio) or when siri first launched voice typing and no one bothered to check it. Edit: Should of should've died a long time ago tbh. could do with a mini-crusade.
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I should of known.
ITT: Awful linguistics takes
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