Quote:
Originally Posted by DTM
<DTM places his fingernails on the blackboard and slowly begins to pull...>
"Could of", "would of", "should of"
Need I say more?
|
Actually, the more common usage is :
"Coulda, woulda, shoulda."
It's not a bad saying and does have some use contextually. The problems arise when you try to take colloquiallisms and put them in print. I once had a voice teacher tell me to enunciate each word while singing as if I were having tea with the queen or I was an upper-class debutante who had taken diction lessons. That advice should be applied when we are putting things down on paper, although more in a grammatical context.
One of my pet peeves is, "continue on." Of course you are going to continue ON. It's not as if you can continue OFF!!
I know many people who use the phrase verbally but I honestly can't remember ever seeing it in print. Well...besides here!
As a side note: I can't imagine the U.S. is the only country where our speaking grammar has taken a beating over the years. I would think that it is a fairly common occurence. I know I don't hear people in England today speaking like they did when Jane Austen penned her novels. For better or worse, we've all seemed to have adapted a more casual way of speaking. For which, frankly, I am grateful.
And, to be honest, does it really matter whether the phrases we use make sense to anyone other than to the person or people to whom we are speaking? -- I actually would have written "people who we are speaking to" which is how I probably would have said it if I had been in a verbal conversation.
