Why YSK?

The first person who typed “should of” probably heard of it in real life that was meant to be “should’ve”, they typed “should of” online and readers thought that it’s grammatically correct to say “should of” which is in fact wrong and it became widespread throughout the years on Reddit.

I hope something could start to change.

  • berkeleyblue@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’m certainly no grammar freak and English also isn’t my native language but this deives me insane… Same with your vs you’re… it’s soooo easy…

      • inge@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 year ago

        right on que!

        Also, pleeeaaase, someone find me that ancient image macro of a boy, maybe he had a moustache, or maybe it was drawn on, he was raising an eyebrow, and the only caption on it was “que?”. I’ve been searching for that forever.

        • Kyna@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Was it the character Manuel from the TV show Fawlty Towers, played by the late Andrew Sachs? There are plenty of images of him saying “Que?”

          • inge@discuss.tchncs.de
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            1 year ago

            Haha, that’s a really good replacement until I find the one I am looking for. The image I’m thinking of really showed a boy, not a grown man.

    • blackbelt352@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      Eh, it’s just shifting of how written work is relfective our spoken word. It’s pretty rare for me to use a stronger “ah” sound when saying “would have” most of the time defaulting to a softer schwa sound, which sounds almost exactly how how “of” sounds. English has been changing and evolving for centuries. There’s even major epochs like the great vowel shift. Hell if Shakespeare were around today and making the drastic changes to the english language like he did back then he’d be crucified by internet prescriptivists for using English improperly.

      If you’d like something a bit more modern, Mark Twain broke english rules all the time in his writings and he’s considered one of, if not, the greatest American writers.

      • Drew Got No Clue@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I’m sorry but it doesn’t fully work here. ‘of’ phonetically should not be spelled with a ‘f’, so they are already using a word that is not pronounced as it is written, might as well use “would’ve”, which removes the part that isn’t pronounced as it was traditionally “ha-”, but at least it’s still correct.

        They use ‘of’ because they don’t understand (or pay attention to) the grammar of what they’re saying.

    • _n9@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I’ve seen “should of” in a book before. I think it was house of leaves, that had a bunch of them in it but it was only from one characters perspective if I remember correctly, so it might have been a stylistic choice. Still recommend the book though.

      • RedundantObsession@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I have that book, but never read it. Too many foot notes, for one, some of them could of been chapters by them selves! (Sorry)

        Is it a “correct” or easier way to enjoy the book? Is it meant to be “different” in that way? I’ve only heard good things about it, so really would like getting to it. My go to time wasting social media is no more a part of my life, so now at least I have the time…

        • _n9@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          The footnotes are pretty much their own story. The book is written like a textbook so it might be quite hard to read sometimes, and it is sometimes boring but still somehow interesting. I don’t think there really is a correct way of reading it though, I mean, you could skip the footnotes but then you’d only kind of get 1/3 of the story. There are footnotes and then there are footnotes of the footnotes.

          • RedundantObsession@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Hehe, ok, so I wasn’t wrong about it being different and kind of hard to digest. Maybe I just need to keep my own notes on the footnotes and footnotes footnotes to remember what belongs where in the story 😅

            • CountZero@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              House of Leaves is as much a puzzle as it is a book. I wrote in the margins A LOT as I was reading/solving it. FYI, there are more fake references than real references, but some of the references are real.

    • ronaldtemp1@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      I know right, I know people make careless grammatical mistakes all the time, including me, which is completely fine but people outright thought that “should of” is correct and use it all the time starts to get annoying

      • Today@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Oh, Dude! I’m 99% for it. On the night before my uncle’s funeral, while labeling photos for the slideshow, two of my cousins got into an Oxford comma fight. John, Joe, and Jeff. Take out the second comma. But it’s right! But it looks stupid! Fight! Fight! Fight!

      • 【J】【u】【s】【t】【Z】@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It’s mandatory in a series, only. Something is only a series of there are three. Plenty of time the cadence and diction sounds like a series but isn’t.

        If the first two or last two are antecedent to one another, you don’t need the comma. Said another way, if the first or last noun is not severed from the second, you need a serial command to indicate that.

        It depends on what you’re trying to say.

      • Ghukek@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I strongly prefer it but it’s not something I feel is worth correcting someone on.

  • nieceandtows@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Crazy thing is, it’s getting widespread acceptance, and will probably accepted as grammatically correct in a few years.

    • Kabe@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      A bit like how putting “would” in a third conditional if-clause has become standard in US English (“We wouldn’t have been late if we would have taken a taxi”).

      I know language evolves but it doesn’t stop my left eye from twitching whenever I hear it.

    • axtualdave@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Not until the definition of the word “of” changes. It is not a synonym for the word “have,” nor will be anytime soon.

      Perhaps, when speaking, accent, mush-mouthed laziness, or plain ignorance will confuse “should have” and “should of”, but one is objectively correct, and one is not.

      • raresbears@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 year ago

        Not until the definition of the word “of” changes.

        Well that’s what’s happening here isn’t it. It’s a word that is potentially gaining an additional use as a result of reanalysis. Whether it sticks around long term remains to be seen, but language is defined by usage and it’s foolish to pretend there’s such a thing as objectively correct. Already the use of the verb ‘to have’ to form the perfect in this case is quite different from it’s other meanings related to ‘to possess’. And that’s not even getting into you describing nonstandard usage as the result of ‘mush-mouthed laziness’ which is a whole nother can of worms.

  • erisir@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    language is full of idiosyncrasies like this (my favorite is an ekename -> a nekename -> a nickname. see Wikipedia). it’s perfectly conceivable that should have would be fully re-analyzed in speech like that, so the proper form of the verb to have would become of after should

    • Chaser@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      Same deal with the word “Apron”. It started out as napron, so people would say a napron which turned into an apron

  • gyrodaddy@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    I had a professor who would use “should of” in speech, probably because he read it so much and internalized it as being correct.

    • DesGrieux@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      “Should’ve” and “should of” are pronounced the same, what are you talking about? There’s no way you can mix them up in speech. Are you even a native English speaker?