I know every language is a living thing full of idiom, dialect and regional variation, and I know that grammar is a similarly evolving matter of practice and use, but, call me old-fashioned, there are some grammatical errors which just irritate me.
As my children know from my continually correcting them, I really do not like it when people say ‘could of’ instead of ‘could have’, and the same with ‘should of/should have’, ‘would of/ would have’! Why does it matter they ask, people know what they mean, why on earth does it matter.
Hmmm, I like the introduction of new words and terms and idioms, I like the way English rolls along changing and developing so why do I hang onto the convention of could, should,would have when, as my children correctly say, everyone understands perfectly well. I know how it has evolved from the fact that shortening could have to ‘could’ve’ sounds like ‘could of’, but it isn’t correct; it is wrong!
Surprisingly, although I went to a grammar school a very, very long time ago, we were never taught ‘proper’ grammar, just the names of the parts of speech; and even though I did Latin the grammatical terms were not explained, so although I now do know about auxiliary verbs and such, I find it difficult to explain. However, here is a nice little article here which does explains it:
http://grammartips.homestead.com/couldof.html
Lois Elsden 
Grr “could of” etc wrong, wrong, wrong.
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Thank you!!!!
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I have to admit to being a pedantic bar steward but this really does annoy me too! 😀
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It just really jars, doesn’t it?!
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😉
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I use “would of”, “could of” and “should of” all the time – both in spoken and written form. In fact, I didn’t even know it was wrong until someone at work pointed it out to me a few days ago. For the record, I’m a fairly educated 35 year old native English speaker with a good job and I do quite a bit of reading and writing. I’m a reasonably good speller, but I don’t know the first thing about grammar (all those terms like “preposition”, “adverb”, “adjective” etc. – I have no idea what they are). I wasn’t formally taught any grammar at school – I just picked it up on the way. Hence I never understood what that expression should consist of; “would of been”, “should of done” etc. makes perfect sense to me. Another thing I tend to do is say “You shouldn’t of have” when I mean “You shouldn’t have”. For example, when someone does something nice for me, I’ll say: “Oh, you shouldn’t of have!” I never realised where the “have” part came from, but I always thought the “of” part had to be there to connect these words. Leaving it out would seem to me like something is missing. To me, “you shouldn’t of have” makes just as much sense as “you shouldn’t of done that”.
Obviously, these mistakes are very common and it’s not surprising that I wasn’t told about it earlier; many people use these words the same way that I do, and many of those who “know better” are not very nitpicking about it; however, there are always “grammar nazis” who enjoy correcting other people’s language. In everyday speech, “could of” and “could have” sound exactly the same, so why should it be so important how it’s written? I for one would be delighted if “could of/should of” made it into dictionaries and became recognised as correct. Meanwhile I’ll try to remember to use them correctly, but I can’t promise anything 🙂
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