English Language Learners Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for speakers of other languages learning English. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
The sentences here
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4135594-fannie-freddie-legislation-sounds-intractable
Corker came to Congress w/o a pot to piss in & is leaving worth $56,000,000. He must of taken his own advice to short Fannie & Freddie. I wish I had.
He must of taken his own advice to short Fannie & Freddie.
How to understand of taken his own advice ?
A typo or right expression ?
It's a typo because a contracted "have" after certain modals such as "must", "should", "would", "could", and "might" sounds like "of" when it's pronounced, i.e. "must've" sounds like "must of". Because the contracted form of "have", which is 've, is a homophone of the word "of", some native speakers, especially uneducated native speakers, get confused and write it incorrectly. This incorrect use of "of" is common among many younger writers, especially teenagers, who tend to write it as "of" these days because they either haven't paid much attention in English class or they just make a mistake while they are quickly writing. The above statement, if it were written in correct English, should read as follows:
"He must have taken his own advice to short Fannie and Freddie."
