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.
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.
Y’all’d’ve guessed.
(Reddit has previously informed me that y’all’d’ve is the winner in these complex contractions.)
😱 You are triggering my fear of more than 1 apostrophes in a word
Coulda, shoulda, woulda…
deleted by creator
now im wondering if this is actually gramatically correct or not
Yes, it is.
:(
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.
Isn’t it actually “For Fuck’s sake”?
Only correct take here…
lol
For fucks sake…
just say “F.F.S.” from that point on
lol I remember reading this on Quora
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…
Yeah once you understand the concept it’s not too crazy. But it is still crazy.
Same here. I think some people just make it a habit to type/write wome words incorrectly.
I pressed my break to stop the car…
Your correct about that
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
But more importantly, where do you stand on the Oxford comma?
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.
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!
Ah funerals, people really get upset over the smallest things due to all the pain from the loss. I don’t want to ever go through that again but I know it’s just a part of life. :(
Yeah. Had to do it twice in the last year. Sucks.
Damn man, I’m really sorry for your losses. I’ve experienced something similar in the past. It’s like when one person dies, more follow shortly. I feel like when people loose their loved ones, its like some peoples bodies when they are old just give up as the person they loved disappeared.
I strongly prefer it but it’s not something I feel is worth correcting someone on.
Same! I rather see shoulda than should of.
I know, for all intensive purposes it’s maddening.
Don’t crash to the floor. That’d hurt.
Giving my best!
deleted by creator
That and “all of the sudden.”
Not just any other sudden. It’s THE sudden.
Hard relate!
You should halve your outrage at poor grammar usage.
I reflected on the the whole thing after hearing opinions from both sides of users. I now realise I don’t care as much anymore which may be a good thing.
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/.
Of course, if we had spelling reform, that would cause even more errors lol
English spelling errors are common because English is not written phonetically. If you fix that, you reduce the errors, not increase them. Spelling mistakes would still occur to some degree (ultimately because one dialect’s pronunciation must be chosen for the written standard) but it would still be an improvement.
Imagine if anglophone students could learn to read and write in 2 years like their peers in Spanish and German speaking countries (many dozens of others) instead of 10.
You’re forgetting the transition period where we change a standard ppl are used to, and also that it’ll be impossible to make orthography match phonics bc different accents and dialectes of english all pronounce things differently
Edit: and also I think Spanish and German speaking counties probably just have better education systems
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.
Should of have’ve known that.
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?
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
Pretty sure it’s actually one of those mistakes that is made more often by native speakers than non-native speakers
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 like theyre/theire/they’re - in my experience it’s mostly native speakers confusing them.
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’”…
Golly, I should of known that
- Golly, eye should of noun that
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’ve” and “should of” are pronounced the same, what are you talking about? There’s no way you can mix them up in speech. Are you even a native English speaker?
ITT: Awful linguistics takes
deleted by creator
As far as I know this is pretty normal in (some?) Southern American dialects, i.e. it’s not wrong, just dialectal.
deleted by creator
That’s not how linguistics works though. If people (native speakers) speak like that, it’s “correct” or normal for their dialect. This doesn’t mean it’s “correct” in whatever is considered the “standard” dialect of the language (for English, there isn’t one single standard, but de facto there are standard dialects in the English speaking countries which are taught in school and typically used in the news, newspapers etc.). But from a linguistic perspective, both “I have seen it.” and “I seen it.” are equally “correct” (linguists typically don’t use that term in this context, rather something like “grammatical”), they just represent different dialects of English.
deleted by creator
Damn I should of known this
Damn, and here I thought Redditors were the only ones who couldn’t detect a joke
Lmao right? This is obviously a joke
DownvotersCanLigmaBalls
Downvoted 🥵
Oh shit
Anyone else also say “shouldn’t’ve” instead of “shouldn’t have”? No? Just me?
deleted by creator
“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.
