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"Ampersand" is like "could of", and yet is not like it. Ampersand is a change in sounds, for the sake of easier pronunciation: and per se and # original
andperseand # remove spaces
andpers'and # drop extra vowel, for slightly faster speech
an'pers'and # drop extra consonant, for same reason
anpersand # drop apostrophes
ampersand # transform "n" to its neighbor, "m", because it's easier to say before "p"
These are all merely changes in sounds, the consonants and the vowels, the "phonemes" as linguists call them. The course from "am not" to "ain't" follows a similar pattern."Could of", on the other hand, is not phonological but morphological --- a change in meaning, because "of" doesn't mean "have". Or maybe it is merely typographic, because what they could have written is "could've", which sounds the same as "could of" --- and it's probably what they meant but simply made the same mistake as when you accidentally write "there" instead of "their". And I don't believe your repulsion is "irrational", as you say. There is value in preserving the current state of language, of slowing down its changes, simply for the sake of intelligibility, for now and for posterity. A single instance of one person correcting someone else's "could of" is a like throwing an ice cube atop a melting glacier, but like voting in a general election, but it is no reason to just give up. (Of course the stakes are low, so we must say it only if it will be well received.) Now there is a class of "corrections" that are misguided, I think, like the rule that you cannot end a sentence with a preposition. That arose from lovers of Latin, which doesn't end sentences in prepositions because it is impossible, and they were trying to make English more like Latin. |