He should of known that.
It doesn’t jive.
Indeed. “Youse guys.” And you’ll hear it in the Chicago area sometimes, too. It’s definitely normal among the cohort I grew up with, like “hey, what youse guys doing tonight?” Or, more phonetically, “Whuh choose guys doin’ t’night?”
Yeah, I was going to spell it that way but you’s was hard enough. Didn’t want to hurt myself.
There’s something to that. On the other hand, the way I was raised, my native language actually is “proper English.” I eventually picked up enough demotic from the other kids to become able to code-switch.
I should have said “punctuation convention”. My main point was that there were two ways to write a possessive of a word ending with an S, and no universal agreement about which is standard.
I thought the Apostrophe marked that one part that the nicean sages decided did not belong in the bible.
Our poster with the “could of” proclivity has done it again in the thread about taking someone out to dinner with a coupon. That’s twice since this thread was begun, and twice since he posted here in it. I do not think he is taking this seriously. Good thing I’m not a grammar nazi. 
In the words of Bob Dylan, “You will not die. It is not poison.”
My friend in New Mexico just posted a pic of a long-awaited rain shower. One of her friends commented: “I love rain on the dessert!”
So I mischievously replied: “Someone left a cake out in the rain.”
It wasn’t me was it? I don’t want to have to go back to everything I posted this week just to check.
And by the way, I don’t take anything in this particular thread seriously.
ETA: I guess it could of been me, I don’t know.
For some reason, I didn’t know that until I was in my 20s. However, up to that time I always wrote it out: “couldn’t have”.
I kinda like ‘could of’. Makes me feel nostalgic. Malapropisms annoy me though; I’m always afraid that if they happen often enough they’ll become accepted usage.
What truly hurt my head was when, on a different site, I saw “He could had of sent them to …”
This thread reminds me of something I found out recently about spelling/usage that I’m surprised never came up before, or I at least hadn’t noticed. There’s apparently a word called “apiece” that you use when you say “The items are $2 apiece”. I even typed the space in there as I typed that out because I swear I never had seen the word “apiece” before so I haven’t gotten used to typing it yet. I only found out when Microsoft Word corrected me on it, and I took to Google to find out that it was right. It noted however, that “The pizza is $2 a piece” is correct because you’re literally referring to pieces. But what if you said “The pizza slices are $2 a( )piece”? You just called them slices, but they are also pieces. But the meaning is entirely like the first sentence and not the second, and the rule apparently is to put a space there if the items are literally pieces.
I wish I was making this up.
https://brians.wsu.edu/2016/05/17/apiece-a-piece/
Apparently there is no major kerfluffle about people using the word the wrong way, but it feels as though it was something that the strict grammarian that taught my “Accounting Communication” class would have forced on us to learn, given that we did the same with “every( )day”.
Of course, she didn’t believe in using the subjunctive. One example of a correct sentence among those with errors included one that started was “If I was king, I would…” I think I was the only person in the class that said it was wrong. Reading up on the subjunctive just now to make sure that I got it right, I found a introductory phrase that has drastically changed meaning between subjunctive and indicative: “If he was a woman” vs. “If he were a woman”. Now I can’t think of any conclusions to those introductions that would make logical sense for both, but I hope someone here can figure one out.
AFAIK “apiece” is bog standard English since forever. I’m amazed anyone would find that word unusual.
Which just goes to show how varied our experiences are. We all learn our language by doing, and who knows what holes are in our personal hunk of Swiss cheese-like knowledge.
The OED has a cite for “apiece” from the King James Bible.
Now I want aslice to be a thing. The pizza is $2 aslice. The Swiss cheese is 25 cents aslice. I think we can make this happen.
Well, “nevertheless” means something completely different from “never the less”, just like “a stride” is not cognate with “astride”.
A way a lone a lost a last a loved a long the riverrun