to be annoyed at number of people who write

[Sallyingforth]

should of ...
could of ...
would of ...
etc.

The word is have !!!

LRD yes I guessed that, like someoftheabove before you. But you would hardly expect me to copy it.
As for the zed, I did say I would accept it - even though it seems rather harsh to my delicate ears.

Well only that we don't tend to form tenses of verbs with prepositions but with parts of other verbs.

Most people might not be able to put that into words but they know that some past tenses are created with have or had - not from or with or by.

I'm sorry, I'll stop teasing you now. It's not something that gets me, but there are ones that do.

I find the z/s thing annoying purely because it's such a pain to spellcheck a long document for it. It irritates me irrationally when people insist it's only American, though. Not sure why.

dr - sure, but it would be perfectly possible to imagine a language where we did use prepositions, wouldn't it?

I mean, it's not like saying 'different to', which to me implies a fundamental failure to understand a concept. It's just a failure to recognize a convention.

OP you missed a 'the' out of your title

It's not difficult to understand. If you say 'should have' you more than likely say 'should've' and it sounds exactly the same as 'should of' so it's hardly surprising that some people, having heard 'should of' then write 'should of'.

Also so much of the rule of English language is 'because I say so'.

Have is possesive. I have the measles. Maybe the measles have you! But then I should have taken the bus. I have taken the bus. Does this mean I have the bus? I possess the bus? No. I am on the bus. Not in the bus? Maybe if I 'have taken the bus' I possess 'taken the bus' but that's nonsense. 'taken the bus' is not something you can possess.

I'll get you that 'right away'. What does that mean?!

Should of is no more nonsensical as many other things.

Still annoys the hell out of me too.

You shouldn't of posted this. It's threads like this that could of made everybody feel sad when they read it. If only you would of thought it through.

(That was hard to do without typing have!)

Well it would be possible if we were all adept at imaging completely other languages which don't use our own familiar structures. Of course such a thing could exist and maybe even does exist somewhere in the world but not in ours.

People know that they don't say "I of gone shopping" and they wouldn't need any grammar knowledge to have that go through them like nails on a blackboard. So I must agree with the OP and say that should of and could of are absolutely horrible. Worse even than sofa's.

Can you edit messages? 'no more nonsensical than many other things'. tsk at self.

Have you tried Pedants' Corner?

Their, there and they're.
Makes my teeth itch when it's wrong.
YANBU.
Or maybe I am BU?!

booyhoo I thought the same. I can't stand people moaning and bitching about spelling and grammar when they make mistakes in their titles/posts.

You should have found something else to do

Mmm, fair enough drj. I suppose it's just one of those things that bug some of us and not others.

alwayswashing, the fact that you put their, there and they're instead of there, their and they're makes me uncomfortable. It's like putting Dec and Ant to me!

This sort of thing used to bother me (teacher) until I met my dp who struggles a little with the English language but is still intelligent and wonderful. I realised that there are more important things to worry about than picking on someone's use of grammar.

All that said, it still annoys me if official documentation is written incorrectly; there is no excuse for not getting things like leaflets etc properly proof-read.

oh dear.... perhaps some people do not have degrees in english, does it really matter?!

It's people like you, OP, that make me not want to post for fear of being judged and taken the piss out of.

I am dyslexic so I the grammar rules hard to understand and spent years of if I can't spell a word I have to think of one which has the same meaning, it makes me feel very self conscious and stupid when people comment on grammar on a public message board - I agree if its a offical document or an essay but does it really matter?

I feel I don't want to post on Mumsnet for fear of someone telling me I can't spell or my grammar is wrong

pinkfairydust plunge in love and ignore the pedants. That's why they have their own corner.

OP look up Skitt's Law

Here we go :)

What you should of done, if this would of annoyed you so badly, is search the boards.

Then you could of found 1,000,000 similar threads.

HTH!

I don't usually comment on grammar, but I think what annoys me about that particular error is that it's not so much someone having difficulty with grammar as apparent laziness.
In speech, 'should have' gets contracted to 'should've'.
And then when written, 'should've' gets printed as 'should of' instead of its rightful spelling.

Anyway looking at the responses above it seems I've only about 50% BU. I'll have to be content with that. Thank you!

I think people need to get over it. As Waffly said, much of our language and grammar rules do not make logical sense, it is just convention. Clarity of meaning is the key point. Often it is harder to understand so-called grammatically correct statements as writers go all round the houses to avoid using features of English that are in common usage, and clearly understood, but they deem to be wrong.

Sorry, but it is lazy to make assumptions like that. It's got nothing to do with being lazy. It's that some people don't know it's meant to be 'have' and they heard 'of' when they're learning. And it sticks.

Laziness is when you know perfectly well what the right one is, and there's no aural trigger pushing you to make the mistake, but you think 'fuck it, I'll write 'u' for 'you' and 'of' for 'have' because I can't be arsed'.

IMHO.

god who really cares (apart from pedants and they have their own board) it's what people say that's interesting not how they say it.