Incorrectly using 'of' as in "shouldn't of done that" or "I would of done that if I'd remembered".
I know why people think that's how it's written. Because that's what it
sounds like. Granted, 'shouldn't've' is a double contraction, which is
considered non-standard. But that's no excuse. That just means you
shouldn't use it when writing in the first place. 'Would've' has no such
excuse. The person who gets that wrong didn't pay attention in English
class or they never learned it in the first place.
When I see this I really feel like there just isn't enough attention given to education in the U.S. And I'm not even just talking about money. I'm talking about respect. Lack of funding is just a symptom, not the disease itself. The disease is how little Americans care of learning. They like to keep it real instead. There's this attitude here of "Too much book learning will make you lose sight of how the real world works."
But...But...learning helps you see how the real world works. Learning teaches you that. Though school is more about education, there is the social aspect to it and learning how to behave in a given situation, the main focus is indeed learning how to do things and how things should be. Such as learning to read and write your own language correctly. I might make some mistakes here and there but at least I can say I tried to learn. I probably did learn and lack of use has dulled my brain. People these days, especially Americans (pardon the generalization) just don't think you need an education to "make it" these days. There are plenty of idiots in the public eye raking in millions. It's kind of the same here with women forgoing everything in the pursuit of marrying a footballer so they can live the easy life. They could at least have a back up plan.
ReplyDeleteKinda sorry for ranting there. As you can probably guess things like that are an annoyance for me too.
You don't need a pardon for that generalization. It's true. In fact, we love to hear about people who've struck it rich despite having little to no qualification. It gives us hope that it might happen to us.
DeleteHaha that one pisses me off too whenever I see it. Along with people who say 'I could care less'
ReplyDeleteI once spent 2 days pondering that expression. I think it can be explained away as sarcasm, i.e. They mean to say, "I *couldn't* care less", but I don't think they actually mean to be even that witty.
DeleteNope it's just people not realized the difference. "I could care less" implies that they care a little. If you point this out to someone they just don't seem to get it. I think it's just idiocy. There may be some who do it for sarcasm, but generally I believe it to be not understanding. Then I try not to care about why myself.
DeleteThat should be "not realizing". I must be tired to make a mistake like that.
DeleteYou know I never really paid attention to this before..
ReplyDeleteI understand why it could be annoying but what if this way of speaking is conditioned into one's dialect? I mean I know, know a handful of people that would speak like this in an informal environment but academically would not use it.
Is it the use of the word incorrectly that annoys or the fact that the people do not know better?
I'm not criticizing speaking, I'm criticizing the writing mistake. The thing is that "would've" and "would of" SOUND the same, and that's why people end up writing it that way, too. That doesn't make it right.
DeleteLinguistically, you can't differentiate whether someone knows the correct way or not. But there is no legitimate reason to intentionally *write* that way.