This.
Personally, I say “shouldn’t have.” But I do say “couldn’t’ve.” Not sure why.
I think the phenomenon of shouldn’t’ve, couldn’t’ve etc. is one of the greatest things about English, and when those things set my spell check off red, I take great delight in ignoring it.
If I’d seen this in formal writing, I’d’ve had no problem with it.
Shouldn’ta retrieves 25 million hits. I think we have a winner. If you can call it that.:dubious:
Shouldn’ta without quotes returns mostly hits like these:
“Shouldn’ta” with the quotes returns only 436,000. And even those are mostly false hits: