Oh, yeah, I have autocorrect turned on all the time because sometimes it actually saves time, but I also look at the screen and catch some of its vagaries.
On forums and comment sections, much of the time these mistakes are a matter of FYAC. It likes to decide that you wanted to type “it’s” and if you are not looking, it just goes in there. I have also seen it try to change “were” to “we’re” (it just did right there) and some other ridiculousnesses. I simply cannot tell it not to put in any contractions, because I never use them outside of quotes, but that option has not been made available to me.
That is an elliptical sentence. It would be fully rendered “I don’t know him that you think has stopped using it, but I don’t think it’s vanished from use in any way.” (Note the misuse of “anyway”.)
At least around here, “couldn’t have” comes out more like “couldn’t huv”, and it’s not much of a stretch for someone to misinterpret that as “couldn’t of” rather than a sort of accented version of “couldn’t have”.
That said, people ought to have enough compulsory education to know that it’s “couldn’t have” even if you say it slightly differently. Using “couldn’t of” in a written sentence is awful.
I air these irritants only occasionally as it’s just not worth having to be subjected to petty opinions stating why I’m dumb to feel as I do, despite having explained why it affects me on such a visceral level. It’s why I’ve mostly given up on it. Still, painful to endure such ignorance of language. I’ve long believed we can’t have meaningful conversations with others in the world if we can’t attain even basic literacy.
Like you, I am saddened by this loss of literacy in our society. (By the way, I can almost always clock a Canadian on the board due to their far better facility with our common language, even if there isn’t a “neighbour” or “colour” in sight. Well done to your system of education.)
And since we are indulging in this Airing of the Grammatical Grievances, what is up lately with the ghastly overuse of semicolons?? I am of the Kurt Vonnegut Jr. School of Semicolon persuasion, that semicolons only retain their powerful force and effect through extremely sparing use.
He said:
“Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.”
Now they are everywhere, and I couldn’t agree more. Ugh.
I think this one arises from an inability to distinguish between two separate concepts: You home in on a target, but you also hone your skills. Over time, the terms have become interchangeable for some people, just like flaunting and flauting.
I trust that it was blatantly obvious that the “mistakes” were intentional, humorously and obviously (or so I thought) illustrating the facts that (a) the subjective and objective instances of who and whom, respectively, are usually fairly obvious, so that misuse as in the example I gave usually sounds absurd, and (b) “anyway” echoes the equivalent misuse of “anymore” in the post I was responding to. “Any way” vs “anyway” and “any more” vs “anymore” are frequently misused, especially the former.
As for who/whom, all kinds of “tricks” have been formulated to help get it right. But the serious point I explicitly made later in that post is that “who” is becoming increasingly acceptable as the objective as well as subjective case. It’s becoming the universal one-size-fits-all case. “Whom” is fine when used correctly, although might sometimes sound overly pedantic, but it can be downright funny when used incorrectly, as in my example.
Thanks. On the literacy angle, I’ve had some heated arguments on the subject with some of the posters here. I fully understand, as I’m sure you do too, that language evolves and that linguistics as a science studies that evolution empirically and is inherently descriptive. That fact is in no way inconsistent with the concurrent truth that illiteracy is rampant on the internet, whether one explicitly acknowledges it, or calls it “non-standard” English, or even if one predicts that certain stupidities will eventually make their way into dictionaries and style guides, as indeed some probably will (though if there is a God, most will not). But rules do exist, and some language usage like “could of” and “would of” – which in fact does not represent any language that I know of – is very clearly due to nothing more than laziness, carelessness, or ignorance and is more a devolution than evolution of English, because it makes the writer harder to understand, and frankly also makes the writer sound like a fucking moron and therefore less credible.
Incidentally, the absence of “neighbour” and “colour” and the like in my postings here is a courtesy to the American majority on this board, though it’s becoming problematic because I’m starting to spell that way in general!
I confess to being one of the guilty parties. I used to use dashes very frequently instead, on the basis that semicolons were maybe a little too formal or pedantic. The question is why the frequent use of either, and I suppose it has something to do with the way one writes in board postings vs other media. Or maybe it’s just me. When writing conversationally I have a tendency to produce train-of-thought run-on sentences and sometimes have to force myself to stop and break them up.
I use semicolons, but I use them correctly. I use colons too, but also, correctly only. I know how to use “only” correctly as a modifier
I use dashes, but usually only in things like emails and MB posts. I would never write a paper for a class or publication with dashes, albeit, I might write first-person narrative fiction with them. Dorothy Parker used them, and that’s good enough for me. And yes, I use the word “albeit.” Wanna say something to my face about it?
And BTW: “Go to the pool only if you need the swimming credit.” Is fine.
Not fine is “Go to the pool if you only need the swimming credit.” (Unless the latter is precisely meant-- that is, only those who need the swimming credit and nothing else should go. Only go to the pool if you need the swimming credit is just bad. If "EVERYONE who needs a swimming credit will come at the same time, and neglect the other credits they need,
Yeah. A mere spelling error like “could of” or “loose the election” can be corrected, but when people get a phobia about using “me” and it starts affecting how they use their language naturally (in speech, not the artificial form called “writing”) it’s hard to straighten them out.
I have run into problems with my refined writing style, primarily because of vocabulary. I used “exacerbated” in a production report, which was a mistake because the manager was barely a HS graduate and it pissed him off. Sometimes breadth of vocabulary is a hazard: just because you know that and it is exactly the right one to use there, if it sends your readers running to the dictionary or giving up because you are just too intellectual, you have probably failed (unless you know how to couch the word in a sweet muffin of context that makes it easy to suss).
Also, I sometimes have a problem figuring out where to cut and run with a new sentence.
yes normally I use Grammarly (free version)for the most part and a lot of the time it just doesn’t show up even though it’s supposed to be always on and I didn’t catch that until wayyy later … but yes it looks awful even to me …
It was a slip of the flauter.