Why YSK?
The first person who typed “should of” probably heard of it in real life that was meant to be “should’ve”, they typed “should of” online and readers thought that it’s grammatically correct to say “should of” which is in fact wrong and it became widespread throughout the years on Reddit.
I hope something could start to change.
I’m not a grammar nazi, but “should of” is driving me up the wall.
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
I know, for all intensive purposes it’s maddening.
That and “all of the sudden.”
Not just any other sudden. It’s THE sudden.
Same! I rather see shoulda than should of.
But more importantly, where do you stand on the Oxford comma?
Oh, Dude! I’m 99% for it. On the night before my uncle’s funeral, while labeling photos for the slideshow, two of my cousins got into an Oxford comma fight. John, Joe, and Jeff. Take out the second comma. But it’s right! But it looks stupid! Fight! Fight! Fight!
It’s mandatory in a series, only. Something is only a series of there are three. Plenty of time the cadence and diction sounds like a series but isn’t.
If the first two or last two are antecedent to one another, you don’t need the comma. Said another way, if the first or last noun is not severed from the second, you need a serial command to indicate that.
It depends on what you’re trying to say.
I strongly prefer it but it’s not something I feel is worth correcting someone on.
Hard relate!
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Nice one. Who’d’ve guessed.
I wouldn’t’ve, that’s for sure!
As a non-native speaker, that hurts !!!
Y’all’re taking it too far.
It was the Victorians that decided double contractions and double negatives should be no-nos. Some nonsense about making language have rules like mathematics. Don’t listen to Victorians.
now im wondering if this is actually gramatically correct or not
Yes, it is.
😱 You are triggering my fear of more than 1 apostrophes in a word
Y’all’d’ve guessed.
(Reddit has previously informed me that y’all’d’ve is the winner in these complex contractions.)
Isn’t it actually “For Fuck’s sake”?
Only correct take here…
For fucks sake…
just say “F.F.S.” from that point on
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…
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I pressed my break to stop the car…
Yeah once you understand the concept it’s not too crazy. But it is still crazy.
Anyone else also say “shouldn’t’ve” instead of “shouldn’t have”? No? Just me?
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“shouldn’t’ve”
In Canada - we will’ve stolen it from Ireland or Scotland - we’ll jam three contractions onto the end of a word. I forget which case it is, but I run across or write it almost weekly. It’s like a “will have been” kind of super compound phrase.
Shoulda coulda & woulda are all intentional uses of slang, IMO and also exceptable online discourse.
ITT: Awful linguistics takes
While it is true that “should of” etc. can easily originate from a confusion between “‘ve’” and unstressed “of”, which sound identical, the statement
“Should of” is incorrect
itself is at least a bit misleading and prescriptivist in its generality.
Interestingly, there seem to be at least some native English speakers who genuinely do say “should of” (with a stressed “of”) sometimes. This paper for example argues that people who say “should of” really do use a grammatical construction of the form modal verb + of + past participle. One argument the author mentions is that this would also explain the words “woulda”, “coulda” and “shoulda”, since “of”->“a” is quite common in general (e.g. “kind of” -> “kinda”), but “'ve”->“a” basically doesn’t occur elsewhere (e.g. no one says “I’a” or “you’a” instead of “I’ve” or “you’ve”). Another is that the reverse mistake, i.e. using “‘ve’” in place of “of” (e.g. “kind’ve”), is much rarer, which is a clear difference to e.g. the situation with “they’re”/“their”/“there”, where people use these words in place of the others in all combinations frequently. I recommend this blog article for a much longer discussion.
Also, whether genuine mistake (which it almost certainly is in many cases, although probably not all) or different grammatical construction, YSK that “should of” etc. didn’t just become popular recently, but have been used for centuries. E.g. John Keats wrote in a letter in 1814: “Had I known of your illness I should not of written in such fiery phrase in my first Letter.”. Many more examples (some older as well) can be found e.g. here or here.
TL;DR: While in many cases “should of” etc. can well be a mistake, originating from the fact that it sounds identical to “should’ve” when unstressed, there is some interesting linguistic evidence that at least in some dialects of English native speakers really do say “should of” etc. (i.e. in those cases it is not a mistake, merely non-standard/dialectal).
“Should of” is grammatically incorrect, regardless of whether the user/speaker is aware of its incorrectness. It’s a fact, and a fact per se cannot be misleading. It’s as simple as that. Linguistic conventions, as you’ve illustrated, can be formed over time, but that again doesn’t take away from the fact that such usage is grammatically incorrect to begin with.
Just read the second (or the first, but that is more technical) link I shared. Some native speakers do in fact seem to say “should of” even when the “of” is stressed, so in their dialect it would be grammatical.
Isn’t “have” either an auxiliary verb or verb and “of” a preposition?
Are these acceptable? If yes, why? If not, why not?
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I of heard that story before.
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Diane of already gone.
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John ofn’t phoned, of he?
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I ofn’t visited London before.
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Of you seen Roz?
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Of she been invited?
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They still ofn’t of any news when I spoke to them yesterday.
I don’t know man, Oxford Dictionary (click Grammar Point to expand) says that https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/have_2
A common mistake is to write ‘could of’ instead of could have or could’ve
I could of told you that.I could’ve told you that.
The reason for the mistake is that the pronunciation of ’ve is the same as that of of when it is not stressed. This is a common error but it is definitely considered wrong in standard English.
I don’t know man, Oxford Dictionary …
Tells us what’s popular; sometimes also what happens to be correct.
Isn’t “have” either an auxiliary verb or verb and “of” a preposition?
Yes.
Are these acceptable? If yes, why? If not, why not?
No, because you constructed them by merely replacing the verb “have” by the preposition “of” in situations which have nothing to do with “of” after “should”/“would”/“could”. I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make, since neither I nor the people I cited ever claimed that this should work in the first place. The claim of in particular the author of the first paper I cited is that for some speakers there seems to be a novel construction modal verb + “of” + past participle, not that the preposition “of” has the same function as “have” in this case or in any other (in this case, the novel construction as a whole would have more or less, but not entirely the same function as modal verb + “have” + past participle, but “of” would still be just a preposition).
I don’t know man, Oxford Dictionary (click Grammar Point to expand) says that […] it is definitely considered wrong in standard English.
Yes, it certainly is considered wrong in standard English, but the interesting thing is that in some non-standard dialects there might be genuinely a novel grammatical construction which actually uses the preposition “of”. I mean, you don’t need to find that interesting, but I do. And if that is indeed the case, it would mean that the speakers of those dialects are not making a purely orthographic mistake like when people confuse “they’re” and “their”, for example, but are rather speaking or typing in their dialect.
Thanks man, that’s all I need to know 😉
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…the reason “in some dialects of English native speakers really do say ‘should of’ etc” is phonetics. Kids hear “should’ve” and repeat it phonetically, before learning the actual words or their meaning. Combine that with the awful state of education and literacy in the USA (and other countries etc) and voila, you’ve got some armchair internet expert justifying it with some big words trying a weeeee bit too hard to make it work.
Then you’ve got teachers who still gaf and know their shit who will correct this before middle/high school, and no, last I checked it was never added to the dictionary or considered correct. Language of course is living and ever changing, but the line must be drawn somewhere lest we devolve into shouting and grunts like neanderthals
Kids hear “should’ve” and repeat it phonetically,
This is the failure of “no child left behind”; it seems that’s all it did !
the reason “in some dialects of English native speakers really do say ‘should of’ etc” is phonetics.
What the author of the first link claims (and the second link explains in a more accessible way), is that it’s not just that for everyone. Like some native speakers really do say “of” sometimes, even when it’s stressed and doesn’t sound like “'ve” at all. So for them it wouldn’t just be a spelling mistake, but a different grammatical construction.
last I checked it was never added to the dictionary
Some dictionaries (e.g. Merriam-Webster) actually do list “of” as an alternate spelling of “have” (not in the sense of a genuinely different grammatical construction though).
Obviously it’s not considered standard by anyone, which is also why teachers call it incorrect, who (should) teach the standard dialects.Language of course is living and ever changing, but the line must be drawn somewhere lest we devolve into shouting and grunts like neanderthals
Language changes whether you and I like it or not, and efforts to stop that from happening are generally unsuccessful. You can also rest assured that a simple change in what is considered correct grammar or spelling (which, as far as I know, nobody has been suggesting in this case so far, but it seems like that would be the “worst-case” scenario from your perspective) would not lead to us or language “devolving”. Also, while we don’t know anything precise about how Neanderthals spoke, most likely they sounded more or less like us and did not communicate by “shouting and grunts”.
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
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.
They use ‘of’ because they don’t understand (or pay attention to) the grammar of what they’re saying.
Sure. Because it sounds identical. " 've" and “of” are both pronounced /əv/, hence the confusion. Native speakers write what they hear. If you ever want to stop errors like this, the only solution is spelling reform.
I never thought that these two could be pronounced the same. I pronounce of as in office whereas 've is either pronounced as in have or as in effective (or more like a mix between that and e sound and an “ö” from german) depending on how quick I want to say it.
I never thought that these two could be pronounced the same.
Yes, English spelling is very misleading.
I pronounce of as in office
That would be a mistake in all dialects of English. It is always pronounced with a /v/ sound and the vowel is a schwa. 've is also a schwa plus /v/.
Shakespeare did not “make” changes, he’s just a very good record of changes that had taken place.
That us just incorrect, his plays marked major shifts in the style of writing for the english language, many writers after him adopted his style and the new mechanics he was making in his plays.
https://online.maryville.edu/blog/william-shakespeare-influence/
It is not incorrect.
his plays marked major shifts in the style of writing for the english language,
True, that is perfectly in line with what I said and contradicts the statement that he "made changes. “making changes” is not the same thing as “marking major shifts”.
many writers after him adopted his style and the new mechanics he was making in his plays.
Many would imitate his style. But we also know very little about the styles that influenced Shakespeare. New mechanics? Not sure what you mean by that. He did not alter the grammar of English nor did he invent words. When people claim he “invented” words or phrases, what they really mean is that his works are the first recorded example. That is not the same thing as “inventing.”
“Should of” is bone apple tea material.
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I feel pain.
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
It’s like theyre/theire/they’re - in my experience it’s mostly native speakers confusing them.
Yeah, I’ve seen have in textbooks way more than ’ve and it’s baked into my brain… This mistake only happens if you hear the word before seeing it written.
It’s because “should’ve” and “should of” are pronounced the same. It doesn’t make sense because they’re just writing what they hear instead of thinking “I’m using the contraction of the auxiliary verb ‘have’”…
It’s because you’re a non native speaker. Should of is a phonetic mistake that can be traced back to repeating words you hear over and over again before you know what they actually mean
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I’ve seen “should of” in a book before. I think it was house of leaves, that had a bunch of them in it but it was only from one characters perspective if I remember correctly, so it might have been a stylistic choice. Still recommend the book though.
I have that book, but never read it. Too many foot notes, for one, some of them could of been chapters by them selves! (Sorry)
Is it a “correct” or easier way to enjoy the book? Is it meant to be “different” in that way? I’ve only heard good things about it, so really would like getting to it. My go to time wasting social media is no more a part of my life, so now at least I have the time…
The footnotes are pretty much their own story. The book is written like a textbook so it might be quite hard to read sometimes, and it is sometimes boring but still somehow interesting. I don’t think there really is a correct way of reading it though, I mean, you could skip the footnotes but then you’d only kind of get 1/3 of the story. There are footnotes and then there are footnotes of the footnotes.
Hehe, ok, so I wasn’t wrong about it being different and kind of hard to digest. Maybe I just need to keep my own notes on the footnotes and footnotes footnotes to remember what belongs where in the story 😅
House of Leaves is as much a puzzle as it is a book. I wrote in the margins A LOT as I was reading/solving it. FYI, there are more fake references than real references, but some of the references are real.
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Right on queue.
right on que!
Also, pleeeaaase, someone find me that ancient image macro of a boy, maybe he had a moustache, or maybe it was drawn on, he was raising an eyebrow, and the only caption on it was “que?”. I’ve been searching for that forever.
Was it the character Manuel from the TV show Fawlty Towers, played by the late Andrew Sachs? There are plenty of images of him saying “Que?”
Haha, that’s a really good replacement until I find the one I am looking for. The image I’m thinking of really showed a boy, not a grown man.
@ronaldtemp1 Reading through this thread has made me realize… Esperanto really is a fantastic language!
