I didn't want to say this, but: how the fuck can you go through ~120-130 credits of college, presumably including dozens of English hours, without knowing the difference between "could've" and "could of"? I don't care what the fuck college/major you occupy. There is no excuse for graduating with that kind of complete lack of knowledge in grammar and syntax. I understand that many people did not have a reading background; I devoured fiction as a kid. I can't point out every rule but I can tell you what is right and what is wrong from feel. And yet, not knowing that "of" is not a verb is really a red flag.

I feel almost compelled to point it out whenever I see it, because it really makes the person writing sound uneducated. Whenever I see that shit, it makes me discount their opinions.

I actually wrote a reddit bot that corrected that exact error (every time it saw "should of", "could of", and "would of", in major subs, it would post in response with an explanation of the error and a correction). But it got banned from most major subs, was panned, and I said fuck it.

But dammit if I don't think every person that writes "could of" isn't someone who has never read a book in their lives.