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.

I would defend my right to use "I was sat" to the death rather than the mimsy "I was sitting."

I'm a Mancunian and I was fucking sat, I was definitely not sitting.

I doubt people will take this in the spirit in which it is intended. When I read a text of any kind that has "should of" or "your so superior" or other pretty basic grammatical mistakes, it makes me cringe. It makes me embarrassed for the writer. It makes them look kind of ignorant and not as smart as they probably are. If I pointed out the mistake, it's not because I think I'm superior to them. I'm trying to help them to NOT sound ignorant or stupid. Poor grammar could affect their chances of employment or being taken seriously in other contexts. I'm not asking for perfection or elevated diction. Anyone who has reached the age of eighteen was probably taught standard grammar in school. They just don't see the need for it. People like me and others simply value precision in language. Most people wouldn't have a problem with having their numerical calculations corrected. I think if pointing out errors in texts is done simply and kindly, that shouldn't bother people either. I also feel that reporting people to Mumsnet for noticing mistakes is worse and more snide than just saying. "It isn't 'they're' it's their."

Hubby and I were talking about …

I really wouldn’t waste my energy on someone’s choice of words ffs. There are much bigger things to get worked up about like the ammount of plastic waste we have now.

Not true for many of us at school in the 90s. I know how to use a semicolon now because I am a teacher. I was never taught this at school. It wasn't on the curriculum at any point.

Your teachers failed you.

My teachers taught what they were told was important. I'm not an isolated case; it was the national literacy strategy.

The one that really boils my proverbial is people who use "hence" because they think it makes them sound clever and immediately following it with "why" proving beyond all doubt that they are not.

I’ll repeat my post from earlier on this thread in response to someone with the same sentiment as you:

You know, people can be bothered about both big and small things simultaneously.
Do I worry about the state of the planet and the rise of right-wing politics? Big time.
Family illness concerns? Yes.
Am I annoyed by incorrect use of their/there/they’re, your/you're, myself/yourself, should/would/could of? Also yes.

Why would anyone waste their energy on the amount of plastic waste when there are much bigger things like wars to get worked up about?

@BrickBiscuit genuinrly shocked? I fear your cortisol levels may send you to an early grave if that shocks you.

These things aren't mutually exclusive.

A missing comma cost Oakhurst Dairy in Maine $5m...

No, an adverb ending in -ly never takes a hyphen when used adjectivally because the hyphen is redundant.

I've chosen this link (from many online, both UK and US sources) to illustrate the point, because the nerds on this thread might enjoy browsing some of the MLA materials! In fact, if you click on the "MLA Style Center" logo (top left), it brings up an index that includes the very topic of this thread (see screenshot). 🌞

https://style.mla.org/compounds-with-ly-adverbs/

I've worked as an editor for 30-odd years, and am still learning things now and then. Beware correcting other people's written English – it can open a bit of a can of worms!

Indeed! But I don't think we should be imposing the formal restrictions of legal and contractual language on a social media site that (among other things) aims to help women out of difficult situations.

Years ago, I had a book of letters written to Marie Stopes, the birth control pioneer, in the 1920s. I'll never forget one letter from a farmer's wife who had been told by her doctor that another pregnancy would kill her, but would not give her any advice on how to prevent this. (At the time, contraception was a closely guarded secret.) They already had at least a dozen children and could not afford another. Her husband insisted on sex and was raping her anally if she refused it.

The letter was barely literate, but there was no mistaking what she meant by it. I do hope Marie Stopes didn't return it to the sender, marked up with a red pen!

Thanks, that's news to me. I really should leave some things to the real experts, but I never learn my lesson.

Hurraaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!! Good for you.

What makes English wonderful is the richness and variety of its regional variations.

A Mouthful of Air by Anthony Burgess (author of Clockwork Orange) is a really fascinating exploration of this. People once lived in small communities, isolated by distance and geography (e.g. rivers, moors, hills), which kept speech patterns local. This was fractured further by the Norman Conquest, after which the ruling class spoke French, the common people spoke (their version of) English, and Latin was the language of the Church. Regional accents and sentence structures are the fossil record of different layers of English history.

For example, Yorkshire speech keeps structures that go right back to Viking settlement:
I were / you was is a survival of Norse‑influenced verb levelling
Them books for those books is a Norse‑style demonstrative pattern
Happen meaning maybe comes from Old Norse, happ (chance)

I could go on about this for ever! but for Burgess, the richness of English lies in its plurality of voices, and I agree. Some provocative quotes from him:
There is no such thing as a language, only dialects.
The North kept its Norse, the South its Norman.
The prestige of the South is an accident of politics, not phonetics.
Every dialect has its own melody, and melody is meaning.

Your "I was sat" is a fossil of Middle English stative passives, Norse‑influenced verb levelling, and Northern resistance to London standardisation. Long may it prevail! 🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞

💗

The thing is, we're only experts up to a point. See my next post!

Aha, you're right about the hyphen and the adverb/adjective conundrum.
I knew it was wrong when I wrote it, but couldn't work out why.

Were you tempted to correct her? 😆 🤣 There's a fantastic scene featuring Daniel Radcliffe, in the Extras TV show. He is messing about with a condom and it flicks off landing on Diana Rigg's head! He asked her if he could have his Johnny back. She corrected him saying MAY I have my Johnny back 😆 🤣 sorry, was just reminded of that!

That reminds me of the Chalet School.
The author was mildly obsessed with the misuse of "can" and "may".

Though this was fatally undermined for me by her making Mademoiselle LePattre, a native speaker of French, tell Joey that ‘est-ce que’ took the subjunctive…

I get tired of the "language evolves get over it" idiots.
Clear grammatical mistakes that make no logical sense are NOT an example of language evolution. That's just not how it works.

I had an elderly relative who would answer a 'Can I...?' question with "You can, but you may not."

How does it work then? I imagine there must be many mistakes that have become part of accepted language, even if they were grammatically incorrect to begin with.