YSK it's either "should have" or "should've". "Should of" is incorrect
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.
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Eh, it's just shifting of how written work is relfective our spoken word. It's pretty rare for me to use a stronger "ah" sound when saying "would have" most of the time defaulting to a softer schwa sound, which sounds almost exactly how how "of" sounds. English has been changing and evolving for centuries. There's even major epochs like the great vowel shift. Hell if Shakespeare were around today and making the drastic changes to the english language like he did back then he'd be crucified by internet prescriptivists for using English improperly.
If you'd like something a bit more modern, Mark Twain broke english rules all the time in his writings and he's considered one of, if not, the greatest American writers.
Shakespeare did not "make" changes, he's just a very good record of changes that had taken place.
That us just incorrect, his plays marked major shifts in the style of writing for the english language, many writers after him adopted his style and the new mechanics he was making in his plays.
https://online.maryville.edu/blog/william-shakespeare-influence/
It is not incorrect.
True, that is perfectly in line with what I said and contradicts the statement that he "made changes. "making changes" is not the same thing as "marking major shifts".
Many would imitate his style. But we also know very little about the styles that influenced Shakespeare. New mechanics? Not sure what you mean by that. He did not alter the grammar of English nor did he invent words. When people claim he "invented" words or phrases, what they really mean is that his works are the first recorded example. That is not the same thing as "inventing."
I'm sorry but it doesn't fully work here. 'of' phonetically should not be spelled with a 'f', so they are already using a word that is not pronounced as it is written, might as well use "would've", which removes the part that isn't pronounced as it was traditionally "ha-", but at least it's still correct.
They use 'of' because they don't understand (or pay attention to) the grammar of what they're saying.
Sure. Because it sounds identical. " 've" and "of" are both pronounced /əv/, hence the confusion. Native speakers write what they hear. If you ever want to stop errors like this, the only solution is spelling reform.
I never thought that these two could be pronounced the same. I pronounce of as in office whereas 've is either pronounced as in have or as in effective (or more like a mix between that and e sound and an "ö" from german) depending on how quick I want to say it.
Yes, English spelling is very misleading.
That would be a mistake in all dialects of English. It is always pronounced with a /v/ sound and the vowel is a schwa. 've is also a schwa plus /v/.
Of course, if we had spelling reform, that would cause even more errors lol
English spelling errors are common because English is not written phonetically. If you fix that, you reduce the errors, not increase them. Spelling mistakes would still occur to some degree (ultimately because one dialect's pronunciation must be chosen for the written standard) but it would still be an improvement.
Imagine if anglophone students could learn to read and write in 2 years like their peers in Spanish and German speaking countries (many dozens of others) instead of 10.
You're forgetting the transition period where we change a standard ppl are used to, and also that it'll be impossible to make orthography match phonics bc different accents and dialectes of english all pronounce things differently
Edit: and also I think Spanish and German speaking counties probably just have better education systems