Why do people write would of

Posted on: by: Brian Wasko. This is one of those issues that irritate the conscientious grammarians among us, but I hope you can see that the mistake is understandable. Notice I said mistake. As much as I lean toward descriptivism, I do think there are numerous principles of language that to violate would constitute an error.

This is one. A modal verb is an auxiliary helping verb that, in addition to expressing action or state of being, indicates probability , ability , obligation , or permission. The most common modal verbs are:. No problem so far. The problems occur when people use what we call the perfect modal tense. Still no problem really, but in common speech, most people contract the helping verbs.

Bloggers love comments. Make my day and leave your thoughts in the Reply section below. Categories: Grammar and Usage Tags: could of , errors , grammar , grammar errors , modal verbs , modals , should of , would of. One of his passions is to teach young people how to write better.

Why not read some more posts on our blog to start?! Also, remember that grammar is more important when you write than when you speak because it is usually more formal and more structured. How do you feel when you read something full of spelling mistakes in your own language?

It will make you write every day to turn writing into a routine activity. An useful way to improve your English writing skills is to start your paragraphs with a topic sentence: i. Continue with supporting sentences : i. Finish with a conclusion: i. Learn how to make transitions between paragraphs to signal relationships between ideas so as to create a fluent body of text. Even in a very simple piece of English writing you have to keep some kind of an organization to convey the message you want in a clear orderly way.

There are many different ways to write outlines and these have much to do with the way you organize things in your mind. A teacher, a tutor, a native speaker: whoever masters the language and can help you understand and correct whatever mistakes you may have made both in grammar or spelling and in the way your paragraph text has been organized.

Writing in English is not really something you can achieve immediately, but with hard, efficient work and gradual improvement you should definitely get there. Start writing very simple sentences and then get the challenge to write more elaborate pieces. Some people know this and realize that "would have" is the unabbreviated form, while others, probably as a child, heard "would 'ave" and took it to be "would of", and thus say and write "would of".

ColinFine: I disagree. You're right that they're nearly indistinguishable, but as a result, there's a lot of people who learned it wrong, and now say and type "would of". I hear it a lot.

It's clearly perceptible. People think the phrase is "would of", and they say "would of" entirely meaning to say "would of", because those who have gone before in the past have mispronounced or misinterpreted "would've" and it's spread.

A similar example that has wound me up in the past: "seems" instead of "seeing as". That wasn't me mishearing the bloke's pronunciation, and it wasn't the result of some academic or esoteric abstraction on what constitutes a "word" when spoken; it's literally what he thought the words were. Show 2 more comments. Active Oldest Votes. Spelling as it sounds can yield amusing results: Along the way the details of his past are sordid out and he realizes that what he once thought about his parents isn't the truth at all.

Improve this answer. KarlG KarlG In writing, I accept "woulda" as a dialect. I do not accept "would of", because it is clearly an error. RustyCore If you're going to be a prescriptivist, be aware that the OED lists "of" as a dialectal variant of "have".

I perceive the first as intentional mangling of written language, hopefully by someone who knows how to write correctly if needed. The latter to me is clearly a mistake made by someone who picks sounds from the air and puts them to paper so to speak. Similarly, I accept cursing from someone who knows how to speak eloquently, and I despise those who use curse words as everyday interjections. IMil There is more than one usage of "have". Although it doesn't fit with the possession definition, there are others.

Most common dictionaries have entries for it as an auxiliary verb, which is how it is used in the case of "would have". Show 8 more comments. Toby Speight 1, 11 11 silver badges 17 17 bronze badges. Juhasz Juhasz 6, 1 1 gold badge 18 18 silver badges 19 19 bronze badges. A popular example of this is the "it's a dog-eat-dog world" being written "it's a doggy dog world. I would not call it a malapropism, because those are errors of real, spoken language. These are utterly different from errors in using the learnt technology called writing.

ColinFine not sure I follow. Are you saying that the term "malapropism" can't be used for written language? That seems pretty far-fetched to me. Got a citation?