Wanna is an intentional misspelling used to mimic colloquial speech.

That is not the case with could of.

The only possible explanation for the use of could of is that the writer is unaware that the correct word could've is a contraction made from combining the words could and have. There is no other explanation for its use.

The writer who uses the phrase could of in place of the word could've demonstrates a clear misunderstanding of English and is not making an innocent grammatical error.

Just got into an argument with a friend, and wanted to see what you fellow grammarians have to say about it...

I'm not one of those people who aggressively uses "whom" everywhere it's applicable. Like if the conversation goes, "Oh, Williams just got traded to Dallas." "For who?" "For Jackson," I'm not going to step in and say "it's 'for whom' dammit!" In spoken English, one doesn't need to strictly adhere to who-whom rules.

But when it's written out in official places, I still think there's value to using whom as a clear way to separate direct object from subject. For example, Twitter has a new function called "Who to follow," and it annoys me that it isn't "Whom to follow." It does feel like there's some clarity lost there.

So the question is, is "whom" really dead, completely? Should we just erase it altogether? My friend's argument is that "whom" is now like "thou" and "ye" and belongs back in Ren Faire days or the dark ages. I contend that it should still be used, just not with such strict usage in spoken English.

"To WHOM brother...."

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089264/

"The best rule for dealing with who vs. whom is this: Whenever whom is required, recast the sentence. This keeps a huge section of the hard disk of your mind available for baseball averages."
- William Safire

22 or 23.

"Could of" is really interesting to me because everyone clearly knows they're contracting "could" and "have" when speaking but something goes wrong in the thinking-writing transition.

You give people way too much credit.

Re whom, count me firmly among those who won't pronounce it dead. About once a day I catch myself wanting to say who when whom is correct, and somewhat less often than that actually making the mistake, and I'm not planning to change. There is indeed value not only in distinguishing subject from object but also in having and adhering to grammatical rules just for the clarity of communication and thought process that doing so promotes.

I wouldn't say it's dead in that if you used "whom" I wouldn't call it wrong. However, I think it's fairly close if not already clear that using only "who" isn't really an error. With regard to atakdog, I think that subject/object distinguishing is somewhat redundant in English as we have certain orders that indicate which part is the subject and which is the object. "You" is a good example where the same word is both subject and object form. I would be surprised if people really were confused by the lack of differentiation.

Very interesting question that raises another one. I`ll give an example:

If I were to ask: "Whose dog is this" then wouldn't the correct rephrasing be "Whom does this dog belong to" and not "Who does this dog belong to"?

Yet I find that people almost exclusively use the second phrase.


PS: Is it "If I were to ask" or "If I was to ask" or are both perfectly acceptable?

In formal usage it's were because it's the subjunctive, or something.

I work in Web publishing...and we are currently having a debate on "FAQ" vs. "FAQs"

I am in the "FAQ" camp, as I believe the Q stands for Questions...and therefore "FAQ" does not need to be pluralized. Others are in the FAQs camp, saying that Q stands for Question.

I have Googled and not found a satisfactory answer. Weigh in nits!

If the "Q" in "FAQ" stood for "question", that would imply that there is only a single question which is frequently asked. I therefore fail to see how the "Q" could possibly stand for the singular.

That did not come out right. What I meant was that if one argued that the "Q" stood for the singular, then they had better provide an example where this actually was the case. Since it obviously never is, the "Q" stands for the plural.

And you give people way too little credit. The assumption "people do xxx because they are stupid" has to be the last possibility you consider, not the first.

Regarding "could of/could've", "your/you're", and the like: I have the feeling that these are mistakes which are almost exclusively made by native speakers, and almost never by people who learned English as a second language. Non-native speakers are, of course, prone to their own set of mistakes. This opinion is exclusively due to personal observation, though, and not based on any sort of proof.

Anyone agree/disagree?

Yeah, I mean FAQ stands for 'frequently asked questions,' not 'frequently asked question.'

The only time FAQs would be right is if you were talking about multiple lists of FAQ from different sources, like if you compiled the FAQ from Apple, Sprint, Google, Verizon, and Panasonic or whatever, then you have a whole bunch of FAQs. But that's contrived. In general usage, FAQ is already plural.

I do tend to stray from my own advice, though, when it comes to things like baseball stats such as RBI. RBI stands for run batted in, so pluralized it would be runs batted in, or just RBI, like they say on ESPN whether it's singular or plural. But I argue that "RBI" is a unit, and becomes a different entity when spoken of as a unit, so when you have multiple runs batted in, it's multiple "RBI" which becomes RBIs. I acknowledge the hypocrisy but I think RBIs sounds better and it fits within my own logic. (Furthermore, if you pronounce RBI as 'ribby,' then it makes even more sense to say 'he had four ribbies' than to say 'he had four ribby').

re: whom - i say it, but it will be dead. i'm not exactly sure what its function is, though i admit i'm not one of these people who researches grammatical rules. my suspicion is that it comes out of latin and has no real function in english.

Is there a good reason for this? Does it apply to other punctuation? For example:

So when you asked if she threw up in your shoe she said "I did?"

Is this the correct form? If so how does one know if the quotation was a question or a statement?

This is why I will insist the basketball announcer who started saying "They have 9 turns over so far in the game" one night out of the blue was wrong (in addition to sounding ridiculous).

Exactly -- "turns over" is ridiculous. One unit is a turnover, so plural should be "turnovers," even though if stripped apart the word doesn't make sense.

re: sports grammar - i still say 'times out' sometimes, though i think i do it ironically

Right, that's why I prefer to go with the British rules instead of ours. Actually, I think it should go a step further and you should always end a sentence with punctuation even if you have a quotation with punctuation at the end. At the very least, you should do it if they are different. As an example, you asked "[i]s this the correct form?".

What about government titles?

Something I find weird is that nobody would ever say "secretary of states" but very few say "attorneys general".

Pet peeve of mine is the phrase, "went pee". This can't be proper usage, can it? Ex: I went pee, or I should have gone pee.

Can someone give me a reason why or why not as well? Thanks!