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Actually, yes. Then it would obviously have been a colloquialism, rather than an embarrassing grammatical blunder. We write for clarity, don't we? Even giving the author the benefit of the doubt, and assuming the error was really just an attempt at being clever, the fact that it's caused this much fuss indicates it was poorly judged attempt. And I'm not giving the benefit of the doubt here; sorry. The piece was not written in a "colloquial" style. The "of" stands out like a pillar. It was a mistake. It's okay. All I ask is that writers be more careful.
Posted at December 30, 2005 10:20 PM in response to We Should of Had Him
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Thanks; I'll definitely pick up this book.
But really -- and I mean this kindly -- copyedit first. There is nothing in the article to support the notion that the "of" in the title and again in the text is colloquial; that's an absurd defense. A grammatical error like this looks bad, and like it or not it does undermine credibility. I'm not trying to be a jerk here. It just needs to be mentioned.
Posted at December 29, 2005 10:15 PM in response to We Should of Had Him
