Brendan Murray <brendan_murray@lotus.com> wrote:
> Otto Stolz wrote:
>> This reminds me to an observation that has puzzled me for years:
>> I have often seen native "that" written in place of "than".
>
> I can't think of anywhere this might occur, but the one that I've
> noticed keeps popping up (and is extremely irritating) is the use of
> "of" instead of "have", as in "I could of".
This is not a typo like "that"/"than", but an infamous and despicable
illiteracy caused by a complete lack of understanding of the purpose of
the auxiliary verb "have" and reinforced by the homophone "could've."
Native English speakers who write "could of" need to go back to second
grade. Sorry, I guess I got carried away there.
-Doug Ewell
Fulletron, California
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