As a follow-up to #49, in this installment of Word Knots we’ll discuss another phrase that’s incorrect, but unfortunately  used very often. (This one is also a not-so-distant cousin of #30.)

Once again our source for this installment is The Dictionary of Disagreeable English by Robert Hartwell Fiske (Chicago: Writer’s Digest Books). It’s a great book: Check it out.

From Fiske (excerpted):

could of

Solecistic for could have. 

As Fiske writes (edited and excerpted):

Because could’ve (like should’ve and would’ve) is a term many people say, could of (should of, would of)  is the term many people write.

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Just as was the case with #49, and as Fiske says, my suspicion is that this blunder derives from spoken English and is the result of people hearing the phrase incorrectly. And it’s troubling that AI won’t necessarily catch it. 

Let’s look at it used correctly:

The bike path was so narrow that we could have had an accident.

We could have taken a different route, but we wanted to see the skyline.

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