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Pedants' corner

See all MNHQ comments on this thread

Writing "of" instead of "have"

110 replies

SmartPlay · 26/08/2019 21:22

Why? Just why?

OP posts:
Rachelover40 · 27/08/2019 03:50

I hate it too, on here I often see, 'would of', 'should of', 'bored of'. It's horrible and unnecessary. However I do read the post and try not be irritated. I tell myself that I make mistakes too, nobody is perfect.

Another annoying thing is, 'registry office'. Aaargh! It's 'register office' or 'The Registrar'.

greensnail · 27/08/2019 05:05

Bored of is correct. What would bored have mean?

banivani · 27/08/2019 05:21

It’s a bit jarring to me but I see it as an inescapable side effect of the idiosyncrasies of English grammar and spelling. Sure don’t the English mangle the language something terrible.

Now people who write Ddog though... if I had to choose one annoying thing that would be it.

AdoreTheBeach · 27/08/2019 05:52

Drives me bonkers too

Along with Chester draws. (I’m always biting my tongue not to ask who exactly does Chester draw?)

My other is dropping pronouns when saying “with”, with me, with you, with them etc.

cushioncovers · 27/08/2019 06:09

I have spent years writing should of and could of instead of have. I never even realised it was incorrect until someone in mn pointed it out to me. I think because i say should've and could've I just wrote of instead of have. 🤷🏻‍♀️

ssd · 27/08/2019 06:16

I don't think it's anything to do with your education, I feel its more an accent thing. I'm Scottish and would never write "I could of gone" , for example, as I wouldn't say it like that, in my dialect. To me reading it, it sounds like an English accent, sort of west Midlands maybe but I'm not an expert.
Anyway, I don't think it's a snobbery or education thing, I think it's more an accent thing.

BertieBotts · 27/08/2019 07:01

You have to understand three things really to get where this comes from: Stress, auxiliary verbs and the schwa.

Linguistically, English is a language which has stress meaning that when you say a sentence your voice will lilt up and down a bit as you stress some syllables/words and others become weak or unstressed. Everybody does this, even in an RP accent, if you didn't you'd sound like a monotonous robot and it sounds wrong. Google stressed and unstressed vowels for a more in depth explanation/examples.

It's where we get things like "cuppa" meaning cup of tea - words such as "of" tend to get demoted to the unstressed form as we stress the more important words, usually nouns like tea and main verbs. Or you can see it with names, just go onto the baby names forum and you'll see pages of people debating whether it should be "RoBERTa" or "ROBerta" (probably not that exact name, but anyway)

Second the verb to have is a complicated one because it can be a main verb (I have three oranges) - though little used in British English (we tend to say I have got/I've got three oranges) or it can be an auxiliary which means that it's not the main verb in the sentence but it denotes something else like the tense. The most common form is in the perfect tenses: "Have you done your homework? / I haven't seen my grandmother in ages." These are a bit curious because actually the main verb in these sentences would be do and see, but we don't tend to stress these because we use this tense to communicate specifically the state of whether something has or hasn't happened, so the focus is on the have/haven't part.

That's the most common way we use have. So when we think about the verb to have, we think about how we pronounce it when it's part of a perfect tense and we think about it in a stressed form where we pronounce all parts of it just as it's spelled and say h-a-v.

But in other formats it doesn't necessarily get pronounced like that. And one such form is when it is part of a modal phrase like "should have". In this case there are two important parts of the sentence: should, and whatever it is you should have done. Have is just an auxiliary and it gets demoted to weak form. In writing: should've. The H disappears and the vowel gets demoted to schwa form which is that sort of "uh" sound that comes between letters. You don't say "I should-AV", you say "should'v" with an almost imperceptible gap between the d and v. (If you had to spell it, most people would go with "uv" - the symbol used in phonetics for this sound is ə.

The same thing happens to of in its weak form. Of is always a joining word anyway as it doesn't mean anything on its own so you need to have a something OF something. So of is always pronounced unstressed which means that the vowel gets demoted to schwa as well.

So there you go - have specifically in the form of should've, would've, could've = əv. Of in practically all situations = əv. They aren't just similar, they are actually identical.

Then you get somebody who mishears should've as should of and if nobody corrects them and/or they don't read much to encounter should have written down, they assume it is a correct variant and reproduce it.

Everybody including Scottish people pronounces -'ve as əv, it's an accent thing when the schwa sound comes out like the o in hot. And nobody says "should HAVE" with the stress on the should unless they are correcting somebody saying should of, or a foreign speaker of English. You just don't say it like that, I can promise you. It would sound incorrect. It marks non-natives out as such.

BertieBotts · 27/08/2019 07:06

In my last paragraph - "with the stress on the should have" (correction)

firstimemamma · 27/08/2019 07:08

I've got a friend who does this all the time, I hate it so much!

Lymehouse · 27/08/2019 07:08

It comes from should've, could've , would've.
've (when spoken) sounds like of so that is what some people write.

MilkTrayLimeBarrel · 27/08/2019 07:13

greensnail - bored 'of' is not correct, it should be bored 'with'.

I agree with you OP - really grates like so many basic grammatical mistakes. I can only think that basic grammar is not drummed into children any more as though it is not important. It is a shame that our language is being dumbed down to the lowest common denominator all the time.

The one on here I hate is 'could care less' - I pointed this out to a poster last week and got a very rude reply! Hey Ho!!

missmouse101 · 27/08/2019 07:15

OP, I'm with you. It is utterly irritating and I just immediately switch off when I see it used, when reading. It does matter and makes no sense at all. It's nothing to do with being 'snobbish'. The more people that correct their basic error, the better. This does NOT belong in Pedants' Corner.

Nanasueathome · 27/08/2019 07:17

And don’t even start on the lose and loose errors

KeepStill · 27/08/2019 07:24

There are adults who literally only read Internet forums like Mn (some considerable less literate), so that the only time they see the phrase they hear daily as ‘would’ve’ or ‘should’ve’ written down, it’s by someone else semi-literate who writes ‘should of’/‘could of’, which they accept as correct, along with ‘We was going out together for a year’, ‘I seen him kissing her’, ‘I was sat in my car’, ‘Chester draws’ etc.

OtraCosaMariposa · 27/08/2019 07:27

Same as people writing "been" instead of "being". As in: What's the best thing about been on holiday?

Totally different word, totally different meaning and although they sound similar, it's very basic English.

coconuttelegraph · 27/08/2019 07:32

I may have posted this on previous threads about the same issue but I think there is a place for bots like I think they have on Reddit that pop up and nicely point out common errors. Im sure someone could come up with a non offensive way to word it so that posters wouldn't feel offended.

I correct my own DC when they say this, they don't hear it from me so I know they're picked it up at school were it obviously isn't corrected. My DC who has done year 6 SATs most recently though says it has been taught at school.

OtraCosaMariposa · 27/08/2019 07:36

I also agree that it's less about basic education and more about the internet echo chamber. Those of us who went through our teens, school and Uni/College before the internet age had books, newspapers and magazines. Even if your only reading material was Smash Hits or Just 17, the copy had been written by someone paid to do it, checked and edited before publishing. It might have been low quality "Does he love me"? dross, but it was at least grammatically correct, properly spelled dross.

Now kids are reading websites, Wikipedia, self-published stuff on their Kindle, Instagram, forums, Twitter. People can write whatever they want and put it out there for the world to read. Nobody is checking it over for SPAG.

cantfindname · 27/08/2019 07:49

I have a few pet peeves:

Reign, rein and rain

Of instead of have

Off of

And does no one know the difference between affect and effect?

I am pedantic and proud of it. We have the gift of language so make an effort to use it properly.

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 27/08/2019 08:12

That was a top post, Bertie! Really interesting, and I'm sure you're right.

snobbish as it might seem, if the medium has such basic errors I'm less inclined to spend time figuring out what the message might be. Goes for me too.

I had a very traditional primary school education back in the 60s and earaly 70s, focusing on the 3 Rs. We were relentlessly drilled on spelling, punctuation, handwriting and basic grammar. Every single mistake in our written work was marked wrong so we could write the correct version at the back of the exercise book, and that was marked too. I entirely accept that for many children this approach is soul-destroying. Dyslexia was unknown then and many kids were written off as lazy or stupid, so didn't get effective support to master reading and writing. It may also have the effect of putting some children off using more ambitious vocabulary or grammar for fear of getting it wrong.

It does seem to me, though, that we've swung too far the other way now. Our appalling record on teaching languages doesn't help either. It's noticeable that many non-native speakers of English rarely put a foot wrong grammatically.

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 27/08/2019 08:14

*early

Grin Muphry's Law strikes again! It was inevitable. Off now to find the back pages of MN so I can write it out ten times ...

BertieBotts · 27/08/2019 08:20

:)

Would add, if you're thinking "But 've and of don't sound anything like the same!" it's probably because you're thinking of the stressed form of "of", which has a very clear o-in-hot sound, the reality is we don't use this in speech unless we are specifically enunciating every word in a sentence.

Zaphodsotherhead · 27/08/2019 08:29

I don't think it's anything to do with education.

You don't need to have a 'good education' to read books.

People don't read any more (apart from online, where mistakes like this get copied and replicated).

Ellmau · 27/08/2019 08:38

Sadly, I don't think it's all that new. I had a school report once, in the 80s, in which the teacher wrote 'could of'. I lost all respect for her bc even at 12ish I knew it was wrong. I think it was a science teacher of some kind.

Nextphonewontbesamsung · 27/08/2019 08:42

Have you written Muphry's law instead of Murphy's law twice now deliberately pp? Grin

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 27/08/2019 08:46

Not the OP, but yes, that's the joke.

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