Please state in which country your phrase tends to be used, what the phrase is, and what it should be.
Example:
In America, recently came across “back-petal”, instead of back-pedal. Also, still hearing “for all intensive purposes” instead of “for all intents and purposes”.
Americans saying “I could care less” instead of “I couldn’t care less”.
I’ve seen so many attempts at justification for that one online but I can’t help but think that those people just don’t want to admit that they’re wrong.
I also like the bonus “hold down the fort” at the end.
Because as you know, it’s an inflatable hover fort and, once relieved of my weight, it might float off into the sky.
“Could of…”
It’s “could have”!
Edit: I’m referring to text based things, like text and email. I can pretty much ignore the mispronouncing.
I mean no? The have in could have is pronounced the same as of, but at least AFAIK no dialect explicitly says could of. Tell the other person to not mesh the two words together and they’ll say have. I think.
It’s very much not recommended, and generally seen as an error. But this article puts an asterisk on it.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/whats-worse-than-coulda
I am viscerally against this concept.
It’s one thing to include the spelling as a way to capture the phonetics of an accent or a dialect, entirely another to accept its use in writing when using a neutral voice.
If anything, because it’s so often just a misspelling I would avoid trying to use it as a phonetics thing just as a matter of style. At this point everybody would think I’m making a mistake instead of trying to mimic a way of speech in a way they’d never do with “coulda”.
Please state what country your phrase tends to be used
Please state in which country your phrase tends to be used…
Worst Case Ontario
English/US - seeing “would of” instead of “would’ve”or “would have”. This one bugs me the most.
