[JKSully]

I'm with Arpad, I cringe at the decline of the written language, too. Justify it all you want, but anything beyond a simple typo that is a legitimate mistake and I automatically make judgments about your intelligence (or more accurately, the lack thereof). The rules exist so that you know how to say what you really mean, and I know how you meant it when I read it or hear it. I once saw someone post a picture in memory of their deceased mother, with a poem on it - another person responded with the statement "I love that I lost my mother last year". By the rules, this person is glad their mother is dead - simple punctuation would have made their intent clear. (And I grew up with this person - the judgment I made about their lack of intelligence is fully justified, believe me.)

I also don't agree with some of the evolutions that people accept - the fact that even experts are OK with losing the Oxford comma rule is disturbing. An example I always like to use is this internet-famous one, which gives you a very different opinion about Nelson Mandela:

“Highlights of Peter Ustinov's global tour include encounters with Nelson Mandela, an 800-year-old demigod and a dildo collector.”

For what it's worth - the "would of" instead of "would've" is a phonetic spelling thing - most people think they are saying "of" so that's what they type.