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.

@Beachtastic The question made perfect sense.

How would someone not know whether or not they can figure out a different way to pronounce a word?

The very definition of rising speech is that it applies to declarative statements that are not questions.

I like those non-question questions.

I found myself typing this sort of statement + question mark today:

I haven't seen a source for that information?

And I thought about why I was doing it, since that's not a simple question and it's not a declarative question.

It seemed fairly obvious. I'm inviting and expecting a response:

I haven't seen a source for that information (but if you have, what is it, please?)

We have this kind of exchange all the time online, inviting a response, acknowledging that it may change our views, mimicking the querying rather than emphatic tone we might use in speech. Brief and discursive. Not demanding answers, not claiming to be 100% right.

I am a fan of this usage and I plan to maintain it and to help it on its way to becoming standard. It is useful, clear, concise and polite.

Can anyone direct me to the anti-pedants' corner?

It's the aswell (written as one word) that baffles me. Do people never read the written word?

I think everyone knew what I meant, really, despite how much analysis it has gotten here. And I use gotten because it's a lovely word which I use a lot, as do loads of people.

Ditto alot or allot. They can't ever have seen it written that way in books or magazines, they must have come across phrases like "Lots of luck" so where does it come from?

The very definition of a declarative question is that it is a statement with a rising intonation, per the link I posted to you earlier. Here's another:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rising_declarative

Well, you can judge them all you like; they were merely expressing what felt familiar to them and what didn't.

And so you should, because it's a perfectly good word. People dismiss it as a modern "Americanism" but it is much, much older:

www.etymonline.com/word/gotten

Sorry, OP - this was meant to quote shuggles! You are quite right 🤩

Shouldn't it then have been 'seated'?

I have been finding the phrase "I would of ....(done something)" increasing lately. That can't just be down to the way people are pronouncing it, because it doesn't make any sense when you see it written down. But people are saying 'would of' without even thinking about the meaning.

Well I wasn't quite right - I am making it up as I go along, not being a linguist. I got the terminology wrong, and didn't know the phenomenon has been so comprehensively analysed. However I think I had gotten the idea. I now know more from your links (and have learned the lesson to at least bother clicking through before replying). There do seem to be subtleties around usage. I know Australians, for example, for whom this is the normal speech pattern. Nearly every sentence rises, whether a statement, question or neither.

It is nice. Also "begotten" and especially "misbegotten".

Maybe I will go the whole hog and revert to "gat", as in "begat" too.

Have you gotten the fish and chips?
Yes, I gat them on the way home.

Every [C-word] 'begotten' pops up from the Nicene Creed, in the second verse of a certain well-known carol. The stress in the music technically does follow that of the syllables. However, the tendency for BE-gott-en, not be-GOTT-en, has to be bashed out of the singers every year during rehearsals.

Along with the extra note slipped in to the word at the end of the same line of that carol. My own bugbear. "cree-ay-ted" not "cree-ay-et-ed". 3 notes and three syllables. Not four.

I wore merch to alert people to this at 4 separate services last Christmas - https://quiresandplaces.com/collections/passing-note.

’should of’ etc was commonplace when I was a child in the 60s and 70s in Essex. It probably had been for longer than that. The difference now is that more people are communicating in writing on their devices nowadays so what was mainly a spoken misuse is more obvious.

Yes, it sounds natural (to a lot of folk), is reinforced by informal writing online (where phonetic spellings spread quickly), and is not corrected by speech, because the spoken forms are hard to differentiate (however much shuggles may disapprove of this! 😊).

I found out only recently that, infuriatingly, many (older?) editions actually have that passing note, as a crotchet or a quaver. I was brought up on CP85 which does not. My junior school hymn book also did not. Willcocks (Oxford) omits it. It sounds extremely jarring to me. It is not an error, just a variation. However, a choir is not a democracy. The sheet before you is what you sing. Full stop.

Your use of "C-word" for Christmas (I presume) is quite the unusual choice there!

That's interesting. The first time I've seen anyone say that. Thanks.

"Gotten" is considered archaic in modern British English, having fallen out of use in Britain in the late 18th century.

It is still used in American English and like a lot of Americanisms it is creeping into British English through increased popularity of American films and television and use of social media.

It likely fell out of use because it’s clumsy - why say “gotten” when you can say “got”.

Weirdly, I think sometimes the rhythm makes it easier to say!

Yes! It's meant as both ironic (inviting comparison with the shock-value of the other use of c-word) and practical (it can be bad form to invoke that season when people are in summer mode for example). I am attuned to it as it will feel weird when we start rehearsing carols in September.

However, a choir is not a democracy. The sheet before you is what you sing. Full stop.

Tell that to the three dementia choirs which I conduct.
🤣 .........but they do have a very good excuse, and we sing for enjoyment rather than technical ability.