I should of called the grammar police ...
My friend kinkyturtle recently had a post in his blog about a common grammatical mistake, the confusion of who/whom. I, like KT, am dismayed at the lack of proper grammar usage in today's society (see here for another example), but I came across another one which is far more common (why I haven't mentioned it before is anyone's guess, I hope it hasn't become so common that I have been immediately parsing the wrong phrase as the correct phrase, that's the first step for the wrong phrase to become accepted!)
On the electronic bulletin board at work, someone was bemoaning money spent by the company on some purchase, where it could have been spent elsewhere during these belt tightening times. A few words from their post said: "they could of spent the money on ... " "COULD OF"???? This rolls into one several wrong things:
* just because a word "of" sounds like another word (or contraction, in this case "'ve") doesn't mean it can be used!
* "Of" and "'ve" aren't even supposed to sound the same, there is a subtle difference, but lately people have been pronouncing them the same, which means that the "of" mistake was sure to follow.
I will give props to the improper "of" in one sense, I've always found the opposite of "could've", that is, the contraction for "could not have" difficult, as it would be two contractions ("couldn't've"??) This probably is a prime demonstration on why we shouldn't even use contractions in the first place (ignore the fact that there's two in this sentence alone), and "couldn't of" at least looks a little better (and doesn't trigger the red underline/spell check).
I think I'm going to give up on speaking English altogether, it's being misused so much. From now on, it's only Klingon for me! Q'plagh!
On the electronic bulletin board at work, someone was bemoaning money spent by the company on some purchase, where it could have been spent elsewhere during these belt tightening times. A few words from their post said: "they could of spent the money on ... " "COULD OF"???? This rolls into one several wrong things:
* just because a word "of" sounds like another word (or contraction, in this case "'ve") doesn't mean it can be used!
* "Of" and "'ve" aren't even supposed to sound the same, there is a subtle difference, but lately people have been pronouncing them the same, which means that the "of" mistake was sure to follow.
I will give props to the improper "of" in one sense, I've always found the opposite of "could've", that is, the contraction for "could not have" difficult, as it would be two contractions ("couldn't've"??) This probably is a prime demonstration on why we shouldn't even use contractions in the first place (ignore the fact that there's two in this sentence alone), and "couldn't of" at least looks a little better (and doesn't trigger the red underline/spell check).
I think I'm going to give up on speaking English altogether, it's being misused so much. From now on, it's only Klingon for me! Q'plagh!