This week’s topic is the erroneous use of “of” after should, would, could and might. (Did I miss any?)
If you can’t see anything wrong with the following…
I would of written this article yesterday if I could of, but I did not have the time. I should of been at a band rehearsal but my amp was broken. The other guitarist was there anyway, so it did not matter. I might of gone along and played my acoustic guitar, but I could not be bothered.
…then this is for you.
The Prerogative of Grumpy Old People
(You may want to skip to the next section heading if your mind is unyieldingly closed to the opinions of people over the age of forty.)
We live in an age where, thanks to personal computers and products like MS Office, almost everyone produces their own letters and documentation (both formal and informal). We also live in an age where we are reaping the “rewards” of two or more generations of laissez-faire in the English language arts classroom. The concurrence of these two states of affairs has produced a large body of people that is ignorant (in the true sense of the word) of many facets of basic English—and I include myself in that statement.
My education included spelling, basic punctuation and an introduction to grammar, but at no time did we (for example) diagram sentences or discuss the placement of punctuation marks in relation to other punctuation marks. I learned more grammar in French than I did in English.
Since I finished school, educationists have pushed creativity over correctness, and the generation(s) that learned in that environment is(are) now teaching and parenting. In the mathematics world, basic skills (multiplication tables, mental arithmetic and learning to understand questions) appear to be coming back into vogue; a similar backswing of the pendulum in English is long overdue.
I know one Language Arts teacher who insisted that “it’s” is the correct form for the possessive pronoun, and despite being referred to multiple reference texts, has yet to admit fault to me. I’ve seen examples of spelling, punctuation and grammar errors on posters, notices, parent communications and websites created by teachers. I’ve been shown university-level exam questions with English so faulty that it was difficult to divine what the questions were asking. These observations lead me to wonder how the current and future generations will learn proper spelling, grammar and punctuation.
For the sake of balance, I should state here that I’m not saying that the problem is more prevalent among teachers than other social groupings. They are as much victims of educational fashion as I was. I mention teachers because they are the people who our youth learn from. Young people hold teachers up as authorities—in some cases, students trust their teachers’ views over their own parents’. Therefore, unless some external authority intervenes to break the “chain of abuse of the English language”, poor language arts skills may well perpetuate.
(All of the above is based on empirical evidence, not on painstaking analytical research. Your observations and experiences may lead you to draw different conclusions. If that’s the case, please share—my mind is open.)
It’s ‘ve, not of!
Countless websites are trying to convey this message. Now there’s countless plus one.
Let’s examine that paragraph up top.
“I would of written this article…” is illogical; nonsensical.
In full, the fragment should have read, “I would have written this article…” In technospeak, “would have written” is in the conditional perfect tense. It expresses something that might have happened in the past but didn’t.
Of is a preposition. ‘ve is part of a compound verb.
When writing material in which contractions are acceptable (e.g., “I’m” for “I am”), “would have” can be shortened to “would’ve”. The apostrophe shows that letters have been omitted; “would’ve” reflects the way that we speak informally.
Regrettably, many people have learned to say the contraction before they learned to write it, and when poised with pen to paper, finger to keyboard, or finger to keyboard facsimile on a screen, write it how they’ve heard it.
Take that last sentence fragment—“write it how they’ve heard it.” Even if you’re guilty of writing “would of”, I hope you would agree that “write it how they of heard it” is just wrong. “They’ve” is a contraction of “they have”, just like “would’ve” is a contraction of “would have”.
Although I’ve used “would’ve” in my discussion, the same applies to “should’ve”, “could’ve”, “might’ve”, and any other compound verb construction that uses “have” as the second component.
Let’s rewrite that sample paragraph.
I would’ve written this article yesterday if I could’ve, but I didn’t have the time. I should’ve been at a band rehearsal but my amp was broken. The other guitarist was there anyway, so it did not matter. I might’ve gone along and played my acoustic guitar, but I couldn’t be bothered.
The quality of the writing is questionable, but the contractions are now correct.
Note that there are contractions involving “not” too—“I didn’t” and “I couldn’t”. The apostrophe indicates the omission of the “o”. Tedious perhaps, when you’re typing, but necessary.
It’s of, not ‘ve!
Bless those people who are trying to improve their written English! Apparently there are some who, having discovered the correct contracted form for “would have” (etc.) have now applied the same “correction” to “sort of” and “kind of”. Thus we now have “sort’ve” and “kind’ve” .
Google reports two hundred and three million instances of “sort’ve”. That’s kind’ve scary!
The Long and Short
Contractions allow us to write as we speak. Few people would say, “I would have written this article yesterday if I could have…”—it’s too stiff and starchy. We tend to elide, liaise and assimilate words—that is, run them together in some way—and contractions reflect that.
The Oxford Dictionaries website has information about the problem here (scroll down to “Usage”) and here (again, scroll down to “Usage”). The error was recorded as early as 1837, so it isn’t a new problem. However, the frequency of appearance has increased recently. For example, Google reports getting on for five billion instances of “would of”. Mind you, it’s quite possible that four billion of those are on websites pointing out that “would of” is wrong.
Even that most unlikely of sources for grammarians, UrbanDictionary.com, has entries for “would of”, “could of” and “should of”. One example cited there goes thus: “I would of kept talking, but she asked me if I wanted to of sex.”
And there you have it—a people’s explanation of why “would of” doesn’t make sense.
Please Help Improve Yonder Pedant’s Ramblings
- Did I miss a typo? (I’ll feel bad when you tell me, but I’d rather you did tell me!)
- Did I write something that makes you want to turn green and burst out of your shirt?
- Do you have any better examples that you would share and allow me to use?
If so, please let me know by leaving a comment.