I have a couple of well-educated ex-colleagues who shall remain nameless who, in the written form, have started using the phrase should of, in the following context:
Mum should of gone to Iceland.
I must stress that this is not the actual phrase they used. They used more business-like phrases. But you get the picture.
Speech has always influenced the development of written language. But the world we now live in is made up of people whose English education is often, at best, questionable—people who, even if educated appropriately to suspect a mistake, have neither the time nor the inclination to search for the truth. This means that mistakes like that above will become increasingly prevalent with time, which is a shame.
The correct construct is:
Mum should have gone to Iceland.
Or indeed:
Mum really shouldn’t have gone to Iceland. Especially now that they’ve fired Kerry Katona.
Thankyou thankyou thankyou. U have been so annoyed with the use of ‘should of’ when, after all these years, I was sure I learned
should have’ at school. I ‘should of/have’ looked up this website sooner!
Posted by Annie G, 31 March, 2010, 10:52am
The number of my school/college friends who make this mistake! Many of them don’t seem to pick it up when I sometimes correct them by repeating what they’ve written but emphasising ‘have’ instead of ‘of’. I got asked by one of my fellow English classmates the other day how old I was, due to the fact I “am good at English”, after they asked me how to spell a word! I’ve even seen ‘should of’ left alone in corrected pieces of coursework, either purposely not drawn attention to or not noticed by the teachers! The education system is going downhill…
Posted by Isabell L., 27 December, 2010, 7:03pm