Thanks, Jeanie, but part of Penny's post seems to me still to have to do with a supposed inability to distinguish f from v: "The children cannot hear differences such as those between f or v and th. Or see them, if demonstrated and given a mirror. And cannot be got to understand that would've is would have not would of. I can understand and agree with the point about "fought" vs. "thought", but I can't see any reason why a child (or an untutored adult) ought to be able to tell from the sound in even the most refinedly royal English that the sound sequence we write as "[would]'ve", if uncontracted, would be "have" rather than "of". Indeed, if the uncontracted full form of the compound tense were not a feature of said speaker's dialect (or idiolect, in the case of a kid), it would probably make more sense for the speaker to guess "of". In my dialect, and in standard American English, an educated speaker asked to slow way down while saying "would've" is likely to move the sound between the d and the v from a minimal schwa "ə" in the direction of "ă" or even "ah" (as in "Avenue" or "Ave Maria") and may even insert a bit of an audible aspiration for the missing "h". But a speaker of a dialect where "would have gone" is never said but "would've gone" is, when asked to say "would've gone" extremely slowly, will most likely merely elongate the ə: — "woooooood uuuuhhhhvv".

Speaking of pedantry.

In my dialect (and this is a fairly widespread but not universal feature in the US) the three words underlined in the sentence "So taken was he with the young lady's attitude that he decided he wanted to marry merry Mary, when spoken at a normal conversational clip, are pure homophones.

In any event, as texting takes over from text, it will probably not matter by the time the children referred to are in the job market, whether they think the "correct" spelling is "have" or "of", it'll be as archaic a question as whether and why one ought to sing "Mine eyes have seen the glory" or "My eyes..."

Haruo