Of of of of of of of of of of

[BrickBiscuit]

That's the approximate number of rogue 'of's I have seen on Mumsnet posts today alone. 'Should of', 'would of', even an 'I of' somewhere. It is spread by repetition. Should we counter by correcting every instance we can, and enforce the correct use of 'have' by repetition?

Incidentally, my title is an old crossword clue. Do solve it if you like.

YABU: no, we should leave the 'of' people unchallenged;
YANBU: yes, let's have a campaign to correct each and every instance of the error.

Someone else who does the Times crossword!
That one got a mixed reception though I thought it was very good indeed.

ARGHHHHH! Yourself is next on the list

If I was writing it, I'd put a comma in, ie "I was just stood there, waiting". I think it reads more clearly then.

I get your point, and can see how it can be hard for a non-native English speaker to get their head round.

Agree - annoying. I can still see my English books marked by the teacher with ‘of’ crossed through in red ink and ‘ have’ written there instead
My other pet peeve is “ I was sat’ or ‘i was stood’ instead of ‘ I was sitting’ or ‘I was standing’ .

On these threads we always hear ‘but dyslexia!’

I am a lifelong pedant with an excellent grasp of - and very strong feelings about - the English language.

Fate however, has seen fit to not only marry me to a dyslexic forriner, with resultant bilingual offspring, but then to also land two of those offspring with severe dyslexia themselves.

Severe dyslexia, and spending their first few years living in another country and barely hearing English, means that my children’s written English can defy interpretation. It is hard for them, it really is.

What helps though, is constant reading. Even picture books with a sentence on each page. Wimpy bloody Kid. Biff, Chip and Kipper. Lift the flap books.

The children are lucky that they have a parent who has made them love books, even though they are still reading years below their ages. They will continue loving books now, and they want to get better at reading because they want to read. They don’t have screens, they have hundreds of books.

This is what is lacking in today’s world, and this lack is the reason literacy levels are dropping off the edge of a cliff.

It is not ‘normal evolution of language.’ It is the wholesale destruction of language by AI and social media.

THAT is why it matters to talk about it.

It is a word. It was used in Old English. The Americans still use it but it fell out of favour in the Old Country ( UK).

I read an article in The Times this morning which included the phrase “a historic”, rather than “an historic “.

I know it’s probably old fashioned now, but it annoys me that even our broadsheet newspapers are letting the side down!

Irregardless makes my head spin

This. There is a proven link. The problem now isn't an explosion of dyslexia, it's a lack of reading.

What about 'oftentimes' ? What's wrong with 'often' or 'sometimes'?

‘Tryna’ is possibly my ‘best’ so far. (Trying to…)

’Step foot’ is one I’m seeing more and more. It’s a tough life, being a pedant, all these things rousing one’s ire on a daily basis…

Should be “to” not “and” but I hate grammar nazis. Not everyone has the same level of education as you. Be nicer!

Completely agree! I drives me mad too .

I despise this type of snobbery.

I had a shit education in the 80s/90s. I was never taught grammar, the government decided it wasn't a 'thing' for a few years. Never taught it should be 'could have' not 'could of'.

I've worked as an editor for years. Had to wing it at the start. I pretended to know what non-seqiteurs and dangling modifiers and gerunds where. Been mocked in meetings because I didn't know how to say 'detritus' (I'd only ever seen it written down).

I've managed snobby editorial colleagues who used to laugh at those who couldn't write 'proper', and I'd remind them they wouldn't have a job if everyone was as lucky as them.

It's often a source of shame for those people who get pulled up on grammar and writing. Makes you feel really small, like you've somehow failed.

So, despite correcting words and massaging prose for a living, I never pull people up for either writing or speaking incorrectly. It might make you feel superior but, quite frankly, it's a cuntish thing to do.

(And I make plenty of mistakes when writing here because, like most, I'm on my phone and writing at speed.)

its grammatically incorrect… you try ‘to’ do something not ‘and’

I had a shit education in the 80s/90s. I was never taught grammar, the government decided it wasn't a 'thing' for a few years. Never taught it should be 'could have' not 'could of'.

How did everyone else learn it, if the government decided grammar wasn’t a ‘thing’ in the 80’s/90’s. I went to a state school in this time period and it was drummed into us.

In the dark and distant past children read books, lots of books because there was bugger all else to do. There was no internet and no online. We had to just get lost in the Famous Five or the Secret Seven, and then P. G Wodehouse and maybe after that find a bit of excitement in H G Wells. I imagine most people my age are pretty well read. We had very few other options. One of the three available telly channels, or a book. That's if you had a telly. We didn't.

I could have written almost exactly that, @FreeFromWhat , except that my childhood reading included Arthur Ransome and I went on to John Wyndham and Ian Fleming (the latter because I helped myself to James Bond books from the bookcase at home).

The Saturday afternoon trip to the library to change my books was the highlight of my week. I will never forget the lovely librarian who was happy to recommend books and to persuade my father that I was a good enough reader to enjoy books that were intended for older children.

The other thing that encouraged children to read was that there was no daytime tv, save for 15 minutes of "Watch With Mother" at lunchtime. If you didn't have siblings of similar age to play with, it was reading or solitary play, and no matter how good a child's imagination is, solitary play is a bit limiting.

But if we accept that correcting is only ever unacceptable how does anyone ever learn? Do we just accept that grammar has gone to shit and that mistakes are to be embraced? Is the answer to "lots of people weren't taught properly" really to say "ah well, best leave them in their ignorance then. It's kinder"?

I left a pretty basic school at 15, same era. Latin? Not heard of in my school. However, I’ve always been a reader. Before the internet, most people rarely wrote anything for public scrutiny. We might point at shop signs that said ‘potatoe’s’, or ‘cabbage’s’, but poor use of language was mainly noticed in speech.

The teachers at my primary school in the 1950s corrected poor speech, how some children spoke at home wasn’t allowed in class. In the playground they’d revert to local dialect and poor grammar of the ‘I done’, ‘he seen’, ‘we was’ variety, because that was their norm.

‘Would of’ makes me wince, but I wouldn’t point it out to anyone on social media. I would have done in my job where written communication was meant to be professional.

No idea. Maybe you were lucky and didn't go to the same shit failing comp as me? It certainly wasn't drummed into us for a few pivotal years.

At the time, English Language was an optional GCSE. Maybe they taught it there? Never opted for it though, as it was seen as lesser to English Literature, and it wasn't the done thing to do both.

I don't find it hard to imagine that people have different life experiences, unlike the many on this thread.

Ah, we all make mistakes. I managed to use 'precisely', 'precise' and 'precision' in a signal comment. Late in the evening, on my way to bed...

I was stood infront of my house incase a parcel arrived aswell as watering my plants. I should of gone in asit started raining.

Could not agree with this more. Grammar wasn’t much of a thing in the 1990s in my country (I learned more about grammar in French than English) but due to being a massive bookworm I had a naturally good understanding, which I eventually polished with further study.

There’s just no need to go around correcting people for their language without being asked to do so; the vast majority of people hate it and feel embarrassed when corrected. People are always saying to me things like “Ooh, it must drive you mad when you see/hear [insert common grammar or spelling mistake]” and I just think that if I got wound up by every grammar or spelling error out there I’d never have any peace.

It’s perfectly obvious most of the time what is meant even if there’s a mistake. I am sure the pedants just get a kick out of making people feel small.

It's a tough question to answer, but I think it's a mixture of embracing it and dealing with it in the right way (ie sensitively).

No one ever learns from finger -wagging snobbery, or being made to feel they're ignorant, especially as an adult.

Ultimately, I think language and grammar will change and evolve. English is so flexible. You can be understood, even if you get things in the wrong order or without the correct grammar. Why not embrace that?

I'd argue that it's more important to be understood and a decent person, that to speak/write 100% correctly.

I find "I was sat" an interesting one, because I do recognise it's technically incorrect, but I think it has a different meaning/feel from both "I was sitting" and "I sat", a sort of inferred longevity to the state being described.

Should of, different to and overuse of myself are the examples that do my head in. "Different to" is entirely my grandmother's fault - I used to make the error all the time and not care but she corrected me relentlessly throughout my childhood and now it annoys me!

Now sitting here rereading this and wondering where I will have made an inevitable grammar error!