Couldn't Of

[shanmonster]

Stop it.

It's not "couldn't of," "shouldn't of," or "wouldn't of." It's "couldn't have," "shouldn't have," or "wouldn't have."

This particular misuse of the English language rankles me even more than "alot," and about the same as using an apostrophe for plural's.

(That hurt me.)

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Much of the time, I think people are simply abbreviating 'have.' I am, at least.
It's still wrong, though, as this would have to be spelled 'shouldn't've.'

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

I can accept shouldn't've. I can't accept shouldn't of. I see it in print all the time.

[valkryor.livejournal.com]

Two of my grammar peeves (and I have a LOT):

- Misuse of comparatives. It's "rather THAN" not "then". "Then" is linear or cause-and-effect and just Does. Not. Work. It really isn't all that hard.

- Misuse of homonyms/heterographs: two/to/too, their/they're/there, your/you're, its/it's (this one trips me up at times, too). The time it takes to decipher what someone is trying to say tends to make what they DO have to say worthless. If they can't be bothered to use the correct word, then I can't be bothered to figure out what they mean.

[threemilechild.livejournal.com]

I agree, homonym-misuse is really annoying to encounter and impossible to eradicate. (And for some of us, "than" and "then" are homonyms.) I suppose the problem is just that it doesn't read wrong for us?

Shanmonster, are you familiar with Hyperbole and a Half? http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

Oh yes! I less than three her blog!

[silverfae.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes, sing it!!

Lately, I bristle at phased instead of fazed, as in "that doesn't faze me at all," and especially when the errors come from English teachers.

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

From English teachers? Ugh. Let's hope it's just a faze. *ducks*

[silverfae.livejournal.com]

*big grin*

[beah.livejournal.com]

In writing, that would drive me nuts. In speech, it's just a lazy tongue. The spoken one that drives me batshit is "Can I help who's next." ARGH!

I just read a cheesy vampire book. Every time they're hungry, the writer says they need to "slack their thirst." The first time, it could be a typo. One over which the copyeditor, if there was one (and I doubt it) should die, but still. The second and third times, though, *I* about died.

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

It doesn't bother me in speech. But yes, in writing, it drives me batty because it demonstrates a profound lack of understanding of how the English language works. I understand why a non-native English speaker might do it, but not why someone who went through an English-speaking education system would.

I was at a reading put on by a writing group, and one of the authors used variations on the word "writhe" throughout her story. It wouldn't've (heh) been so bad, except she consistently mispronounced it as rhyming with "with," but with the hard "th" sound like at the beginning of "the." It hurt me so much!

[beah.livejournal.com]

Whenever something unbelievable happened, my best friend from forever ago used to say, "That flawed me" instead of "floored." Excruciating.

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

I remember tutoring a guy in university who seemed to have missed any and all training on punctuation in his grade school days. I asked him to write me a sentence incorporating semicolons. It went something like this:

The; dog chased;; the cat up the tree;

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

*weeps*

[zydee.livejournal.com]

I'm not exactly sure where this particular abomination crept from, but it's multiplying like mad among younger people, isn't it? Just saw it on a comm that's normally much more literate than that. I console myself by thinking that in a thousand years, at least researchers will know how we pronounced "couldn't have" by the misspelling.

One I felt was even more cringeworthy that emerged briefly a few years ago was "wala" (voila misspelled), remember? And it eventually died. This will too. I hope.

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

Yes!

I bought a pattern a while back, and in the instructions was a dreaded "wala". I stared at it in confusion for a while until I finally figured out what it was supposed to be, and then I did a pretty good facepalm.

Seriously, it doesn't even sound like "wala"! There is a definite V sound. Yikes! Not sure how that happened, except through some sort of "Chinese telephone" kind of thing.

[zydee.livejournal.com]

I have no idea what it was supposed to mean either, at first. I didn't actually figure it out until a "Dilbert" cartoon poked fun at it. By that time even my sister was using it.

Hey, there's an idea--get Scott Adams aware of the situation!