Quote:
Originally Posted by Ivy
I know you're/your and there/their/they're are common mistakes but I had never heard of, or seen someone say " would of" instead of "would have" before and this guy kept correcting them. 
All of these people were native English speakers. |
This is a big problem, IMHO. I see a lot of people doing this, and it bugs me. I think it's because in business writing (and lots of other forms of formal writing) contractions are discouraged. That pains me, because it discourages people from writing economically. It also increases the confusion when you get to the more complicated parts of spoken English, like "couldn't've", which a lot of people will write as "couldn't of".
That's one thing I've noticed about my (limited) exposure to written French. They use contractions a lot more liberally, You can, if you want, express "I love you" in French in all one word: "J't'aime".
(I have to admit that I'm not 100% sure if that's proper French, but I've seen it written that way.)