When did we start using "of" over 've?

Its stupidity and bad hearing. In some dialects, should have sounds a little close to should'ov, and with the rise of text messages and email, this peculiar colloquialism is finding its way in to print, and unless schools bring back the cane I can only see it getting worse.

CBJason said:

Is it stupidity though? I would like to think that we don't have entire generations incapable of learning...

Click to expand...

Rest easy. We don't.

I find my students writing 'could of' in their essays. And 'alot' as one word. And as for apostrophes... an endangered species.

The A in have, in this case, becomes a shwa in most American accents. I can't think I anyone I know who would pronounce the the H and A fully when unaccented. This is poor spelling and grammar, but excellent hearing: Have and Of are both said as "Uv".

I'm curious- would you pronounce it differently?

And WriterDude, before you complain about the grammar of others, I would make sure you have your apostrophes in order.

Wood of a tea tree
Would've attended

I don't get the confusion over why this mistake happens. Their beginnings are pronounced identically unless you're putting peculiar emphasis on the 'of'. (And ignorance is not stupidity, FFS)

When I was a kid (a fair while ago now) I'd write 'would of' and my teacher would always cross out the 'of' and just write 'have' with no explanation. I used to think to myself, "but I'm not saying 'have' I'm saying 'of'" and then I realised I wasn't saying 'of' at all, I was saying 've' and that's when it clicked and I corrected my spelling.

eta: I realise that nowadays some people literally do just say 'would of' and it's not just pronunciation.

This annoys me almost as much as "off of", which drives me up the wall.

Language changes over time. This isn't harming anyone. I really don't see why it's necessary to call it "laziness, ignorance, or lowering educational standards" or "stupidity and bad hearing".

The meaning is still clear.

CBJason said:

Is it stupidity though? I would like to think that we don't have entire generations incapable of learning...

Click to expand...

Yes. Stupidity.

EMaree said:

Language changes over time. This isn't harming anyone. I really don't see why it's necessary to call it "laziness, ignorance, or lowering educational standards" or "stupidity and bad hearing".

The meaning is still clear.

Click to expand...

Yes...but still 100% wrong. We don't accept wrong. That would be stupid.

talktidy said:

This annoys me almost as much as "off of", which drives me up the wall.

Click to expand...

"Off of" is in regional use (Google tells me it's more common in the US than the UK), but it's not grammatically incorrect.

Sophia said:

I don't think it's clear if you're learning English as a second language. "Could've" can be explained, but "could of" doesn't have a meaning. It's one more thing for new people to understand and remember. I don't think many people who see it written down from reading regularly, and have been taught it properly the first time, would say "could of" except in casual dialogue with their peers -- hence the "lowering educational standards" comment.

Click to expand...

How is the deployment of the auxillary verb 'have' in 'could have' any more intuitive than the incorrect use of 'of', though, to a non-native speaker? I thought modal and auxillary verbs were already one of the most confusing things for ESL learners. And as for native speakers, we learn the particles of and 've (both pronounced əv when unemphasised, i.e. almost always) before we learn to read. If you never picked up the correct form it might be a failure of the education system to impart our terrible, unintuitive spelling, but it's got nothing to do with stupidity.

Instead of "ignorance/laziness" I would assume indifference - the meaning remains clear enough* after all. It's not the kind of error likely to cause horrible misunderstandings.

And instead of "lowering educational standards", I'd go for increased participation in written communication. In days of yore lots of people who weren't good at standardized spelling/grammar just wouldn't have so much occasion to write, which made the issue less apparent.

*Someone made a good point about non-native speakers. I'm a non-native speaker myself, and I have to agree that "would of" makes me stumble in a way "would've" doesn't. (My native language is German, which uses modal verbs in a fairly similar fashion, so "would have" is indeed more intuitive to me than "would of". But maybe I just feel that way because English and German used to be the same language anway. Someone whose native language is Chinese might find one thing as arbitrary as the other.)

But someone who uses that kind of grammar is also likely to use all kinds of slang and idioms unfamiliar to me, so from that angle, "would of" might be the least of my worries. When you're communication with actual native speakers, you have to learn how to guess stuff from context, and I would argue even for a non-native speaker, the meaning is usually sufficently clear _ in context_.

I wasn't aware that that was any more than a rare typo or maybe a mistaken backward construction for "could'a", "would'a", etc. It might also be used in dialogue to show that a character was semi-literate.

EMaree said:

Language changes over time. This isn't harming anyone. I really don't see why it's necessary to call it "laziness, ignorance, or lowering educational standards" or "stupidity and bad hearing".

The meaning is still clear.

Click to expand...

Agreed.

There are a lot of words and a lot of spelling, speaking and writing conventions that have changed over time. Just because you see this particular change taking place in your lifetime doesn't make it stupid.

And no, I don't think the Oxford comma is needed in every case, and I use decimate to mean "to virtually destroy." So there!

I suspect it's an error most frequently made by people who don't read much and simply aren't used to seeing "could have" or "could've" in print, and are letting their ears guide their spelling.

sohalt said:

And instead of "lowering educational standards", I'd go for increased participation in written communication. In days of yore lots of people who weren't good at standardized spelling/grammar just wouldn't have so much occasion to write, which made the issue less apparent.

Click to expand...

I agree with this theory. The Internet, in particular, has meant that many more people are communicating publicly in writing. Some of them may not have had very good grammatical education. Some of them may not have paid much attention to the grammar lessons they did have, not having expected to end up as writers.

In the same way, I didn't retain much of my knowledge of Dutch history when I went to high school in California. I never expected to move to the Netherlands as an adult, yet here I am. That doesn't mean I'm stupid, or that my high school European history teacher was terrible, but William of Orange just didn't matter to me at the age of 16.

I think the usage that I find most unfortunate in this thread is not would of, but stupid (with an honorable mention for other negative terms such as lazy). When you start calling people names, you're discouraging them from asking you (or this forum) for better information. Your indulgence in contempt is also, in its own way, detrimental to our pursuit of better writing.

Myrealana said:

Agreed.

There are a lot of words and a lot of spelling, speaking and writing conventions that have changed over time. Just because you see this particular change taking place in your lifetime doesn't make it stupid.

And no, I don't think the Oxford comma is needed in every case, and I use decimate to mean "to virtually destroy." So there!

Click to expand...

^^This

talktidy said:

This annoys me almost as much as "off of", which drives me up the wall.

Click to expand...

Oh, thank [insert deity name]! I thought I was the only one...

EMaree said:

Language changes over time. This isn't harming anyone. I really don't see why it's necessary to call it "laziness, ignorance, or lowering educational standards" or "stupidity and bad hearing".

The meaning is still clear.

Click to expand...

It's incorrect. If we just accepted every sloppy use of language it wouldn't be long before dialects diverged so much as to be unintelligible across community lines. There are times when changing conventions do indeed become the norm. 'Would of' isn't a change I'd go to battle to allow.

If my neighbor says "would of", fine, but if it's on a paper a teacher is grading, the error needs to be pointed out. And if you have errors like than in a manuscript which are not purposeful dialogue or something that actually is a changing convention, I do believe it would get you straight into the rejection pile.

Maryn said:

When? At least as far back as the 1950s. I remember a teacher in fourth grade writing "would of" on the blackboard and mentally doing a face palm, because at age nine, I already knew better. I also knew better than to correct a teacher, apparently.

Click to expand...

It's funny which things we remember, isn't it? Shows this error had significance. I remember to this day a teacher (on the radio arguing against testing teachers) who said they were articulated wherever she was from.

If folks here are going to argue this is a changing convention instead of an error, I'd like to know the basis of the claim. Not trying to be snarky, it's just that it made me think, what does indicate a changing convention rather than an error?

Marissa D said:

I suspect it's an error most frequently made by people who don't read much and simply aren't used to seeing "could have" or "could've" in print, and are letting their ears guide their spelling.

Click to expand...

This is what I think, too. I'm not sure lack of reading translates into stupid or lazy. There may be a strong correlation, but not an absolute one.