YSK it's either "should have" or "should've". "Should of" is incorrect

ronaldtemp1@lemmy.world to You Should Know@lemmy.world – 248 points –

Why YSK?

The first person who typed "should of" probably heard of it in real life that was meant to be "should've", they typed "should of" online and readers thought that it's grammatically correct to say "should of" which is in fact wrong and it became widespread throughout the years on Reddit.

I hope something could start to change.

166

You are viewing a single comment

Even as a non native speaker "should of" feels really weird to me, it just doesn't make sense. Is this a mistake English speakers do as well?

Pretty sure it's actually one of those mistakes that is made more often by native speakers than non-native speakers

It's like theyre/theire/they're - in my experience it's mostly native speakers confusing them.

Yeah, I’ve seen have in textbooks way more than ’ve and it’s baked into my brain... This mistake only happens if you hear the word before seeing it written.

It's because "should've" and "should of" are pronounced the same. It doesn't make sense because they're just writing what they hear instead of thinking "I'm using the contraction of the auxiliary verb 'have'"..

It's because you're a non native speaker. Should of is a phonetic mistake that can be traced back to repeating words you hear over and over again before you know what they actually mean