Quote:
Originally Posted by Garick
Dave,
On the off chance that you're not trolling, let's take a look at your sentence "You should of done none of it." You are claiming that "of" is an intensifier. So there is no helping verb "have" in the sentence. In that case, why are you using the past participle of the main verb?
Let's say that the sentence wasn't so intense, would you really take out "of" and leave the rest the same. "You should done none of it?"
Does this convince you that the what you are discussing is just the helping verb "have" making the present perfect tense? It sounds like "of" because it is contracted. That is all. Seriously.
You should've known that already.
No, not trolling. I truly don't see "should of" and "should have" as equal. I write "should have," but that has no connection to the connotations I would be using if I was speaking (I don't really speak this way these days).
For your example sentence, you could say "You should do none of that" to be more correct. That sentence works for past, presence, or future tenses. The sentence as I originally wrote doesn't imply something that happened in the past without context.