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.

Sir Didymus, is that you?

‘I would like some advise’ always gets me. That is something that I see regularly on here. My autocorrect changed it to advice twice just writing this, so I don’t understand how that even happens.

😆

The incorrect use of “myself” and “yourself” is one of my pet peeves. I think people use myself when they can’t work out whether it should be “me and my husband” or “my husband and I” i.e. they get confused on correct use of “me” or “I” so think “myself” sounds formal that’s probably correct.

DH and I also refer to it as “plod speak” - that tendency of police officers (my only experience is from the various “police chase” type programs on TV) to use “yourself” and various other incorrectly “formal” sounding words and phrases when arresting someone.

I once saw a letter that had gone out from the very top of the office, which started “Myself and my directors would like to….”.

I have seen a couple of instances where discrete was used in a book and either spelling would have fit the circumstance; something along the lines of ‘they were offering a discrete service’.

But yes, you are right @MilanoCortina2026, it is usually discreet which is used more.

They don’t know. A person who knows that ‘have’ is correct and ‘of’ is incorrect would never deliberately choose the wrong version.

Maybe. My parents were forever correcting me if I said something like "Me and Susan did this..." - I knew perfectly well that it should be "Susan and I...", but to me it felt unnatural to communicate to family and friends in a formally grammatical way.

Social media tends to take a similarly casual approach to language, one that reflects how many people ordinarily speak.

There's a time and a place. Of course teachers need to correct errors. I'd correct errors in a professional setting. A forum where people have come for support isn't a medium for picking at posters' SPAG unless the way they write is pertinent to the actual issue they've raised.

MNHQ deem that kind of correction to be not in the spirit and routinely delete such posts if they're reported.

Now everyone uses the word 'invite' as a noun as in 'I got an invite' rather than as a verb. The noun is 'invitation' .

“There have always been people who write correctly and people who don't.”

Yes and in the past the writing of the “people who don’t” would never have been published for others to read - at least not without being proofread first.

That has changed with the internet. Most of the material that most people read is now online, written by anyone and everyone. We’re seeing incorrect written language as frequently as we’re seeing correct language. It’s reinforcing errors and making these mistakes seem normal.
My own teens (brought up reading books every night since babyhood) still sometimes use the wrong your/you’re for example, because they see it written incorrectly by their peers and internet users so frequently.

I really want to correct them but I don't.

I seen
Been as
😩

The same with electric and electricity. “My electric bill was sky high this month”. Electric is an adjective.

It matters very much if the role involves any kind of communication with external parties, especially clients.
Like it or not, people do make assumptions about the intelligence and professionalism of someone using incorrect language.

off of

from maybe?

Ai hasn't helped either, I can spot an ai generated piece a mile off. The use of grammar and spelling is mainly based on American language models. It's very obvious even though my boss is adamant that nobody would notice!

I agree. I once had a line manager who used could of in emails. I actually found it quite hard to write could of just then, my iPad kept autocorrecting of to have!

A stationEr sells papEr. If something is stationAry it’s stAnding still. That’s how I’ve remembered for 70+ years.

I absolutely hate “died of”. To be fair I actually don’t know if it is grammatically correct or not. But I hate it. It sounds so clumsy to me.

“Died of old age/cancer” I’d say “died from old age/cancer”

That's a really interesting point. Because for some reason people are particularly harsh about the violin in this country, and it means we don't have any real established tradition of learning violin - whereas this is different in other countries.
I've often thought if people responded generally to languages in the same way they responded to people learning the violin - by making faces and expressing displeasure- no one would learn languages.
But you still have to learn to play better and that means someone has to tell you at some point, how to be better in tune and smoother.

...but only if you want to be a violinist!

Not everyone understands or cares about the finer (or even basic) detail of English spelling and grammar. Nor do I think everyone needs to, as long as we can understand what they're saying. The perfectionists will continue to perfect their writing and other people's, and that will do as far as I'm concerned, just as I'm happy to see that the art of playing concert violin is not dying out any time soon.

@ItstoolateformeDaveyourselves I think it depends on accent. When I say it out loud they are exactly the same. But I do know that when written it is "should have" not "should of".

It can never sound the same, not in any accent. If you're pronouncing them the same, then it's because you are literally saying "should of" instead of "should've."

"Should've" and "should of" sound nothing alike.

Bored of . . .

My husband and I were . . .