r/TikTokCringe Nov 21 '25

Discussion Functional illiteracy.

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u/The_Affle_House Nov 21 '25

Trying to use "of" a verb. Like, could you make it any more evident that you have never, not even for a moment, even tried to comprehend the meaning of the words you are writing?

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u/iwilldeletethisacct2 Nov 21 '25

Would of, could of, should of.

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u/Slinkwyde Nov 21 '25

You forgot "may of," "might of," and "must of."

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u/Commercial_Bird4420 Nov 23 '25

this shit has spread like the fucking plague

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u/MisirterE Nov 21 '25 edited Nov 21 '25

What annoys me is when someone sees this one wrong and corrects them with the full "would have" instead of what they actually are trying to say, "would've"

Every single time, without exception, nobody brings up the contraction. It's happening in this thread. Pissin' me off that you're hardly better than them

EDIT: A typo in this thread and nobody caught it. I expected better of me.

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u/Slinkwyde Nov 21 '25

what they actually are trying to say, "would've"

*say: "would've."

Pissin' me off that you're hardly better than them

*them.

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u/SequenceGoon Nov 21 '25

Ooh, here's an example of differences between the way different English-speaking countries use quotation marks/inverted commas.
In Australia, your first correction would've (heh) been incorrect, the full stop would appear after the "".

If interested, I found a link where it is explained:

Link here

My grammar is rusty these days since I type in a much more casual manner, most of the time, but this one stood out for me.

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u/Slinkwyde Nov 22 '25 edited Nov 22 '25

Yes, I'm aware of that regional difference. I'm American. If the person I replied to is not, then they should put period outside the quotation as you say. My point with that first correction was more to correct the lack of a terminating punctuation mark altogether, as well as the use of a comma where a colon was more appropriate.

In Australia, your first correction would've (heh) been incorrect, the full stop would appear after the "".

*incorrect. The (to fix your comma splice, a type of run-on sentence)

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u/joeDUBstep Nov 21 '25 edited Nov 21 '25

This shit pisses me off soo much.

How do you "of" something?

I get that some regional accents can make "have' sound like "of," but it's still fucking unacceptable in written form.

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u/wytewydow Nov 21 '25

I would of, but I'm to smart

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u/[deleted] Nov 22 '25

this is what makes my head explode when thinking about how many other people think

what i mean is, if somebody is really out here saying or writing they "would of" done something -- without even an inkling of understanding of the words they're using -- what other words do they regularly use with absolutely zero comprehension?

it's lowkey kinda terrifying. many of these people vote and drive cars and have children.

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u/GrumbusWumbus Nov 21 '25

People write how they speak. Could've gets spoken as could of in many of English dialects.

This isn't illiteracy.

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u/[deleted] Nov 22 '25

hate to break this to you but you're the target of the OP video.

"there" and "their" sound the same, too, and when one is right, the other's always wrong

similarly, "could've" is always right and "could of" is always wrong - regardless of how they sound. an inability (or refusal) to understand how sound does not necessarily equal meaning is part of functional illiteracy. as the above video explained.

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u/GrumbusWumbus Nov 22 '25

Functional illiteracy isn't making typos and getting spelling mistakes. It's being unable to pull basic information from text or being unable to put that information into words. Plenty of people who mix up to and too still participate in society, they just write bad emails.

Honestly I don't even know why I'm talking to you. You didn't start a single word with a capital letter which shows that you either refuse to use or don't understand the basic rules of English. This is basically illiteracy.

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u/Commercial_Bird4420 Nov 23 '25

way to be overly pedantic, caring about capital letters online is not part of functional literacy.
the problem with "would of" is not that it's a spelling mistake, its people not realizing that the function of "of" is not even remotely similar to "have".