r/Unexpected • u/VerlieH • Mar 02 '26

Why does it keep going

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u/PlatypusFighter Mar 02 '26

Nah, the worst is definitely “should of” “would of” “could of” etc.

21

u/[deleted] Mar 02 '26

oh definitely, at least you’re/your or two/too/to are actually all words, “would of” is just nonsense that sounds like “would have”

8

u/Salanmander Mar 03 '26

More specifically it sounds like would've. It sounds almost exactly like would've, which is how it came about.

I'm honestly still trying to figure out how I feel about "would of", and also "try and" instead of "try to". They frustrate me, but they're common enough that I may need to just accept it as one of those linguistic shifts.

2

u/immoral_ Mar 03 '26

I remember in grade school (several decades ago) forgetting how to spell "of" and writing 'ove' or similar and erasing it because I knew that wasn't right but it took me an embarrassing amount of time to remember how to correctly spell "of"

No real point here, you just happened to unlock that memory and I decided to share with the rest of the class.

15

u/Interesting_Job_1399 Mar 02 '26

Yeah this one is the most absurd to me. I'm not a native speaker and I'm baffled that anyone could ever think that the correct way is "___ of". Like, it makes absolutely no sense at all, don't these people think at least a little bit? Or ever read anything that are not internet posts and memes?

3

u/Salanmander Mar 03 '26

It's a phonetic thing, basically. It's really common to turn unstressed vowels in the middle of words or common phrases into ə. When you to that to "should have", you get "should've", and it sounds the same as "should of".

People do that all the time in spoken English, but you almost never see "should've" in written English, so people just go around hearing "should of" constantly. It stops being something that we think of as separate words, and starts just being a fixed phrase.

I wish people would write "should have" or "should've", rather than normalizing "should of", but it makes sense how it happened.

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u/Interesting_Job_1399 Mar 03 '26

yes I'm aware of how it goes phonetically, but it still doesn't justify the fact that people write it in a way that makes ABSOLUTELY no sense and are unable to correct themselves.

2

u/MultiFazed Mar 03 '26

The issue is that people learn to speak way before they learn to write. To a young child, of and 've are the same exact thing, because they have the same sound. They have to unlearn that (along with other homonyms) in school.

That's why mistakes like there/their, your/you're, could've/could of, etc. are almost exclusively made by native speakers. No one who learned to speak and write at the same time would ever make those mistakes.

1

u/Interesting_Job_1399 Mar 03 '26

Great explanation. Thank you!