Edith,

We all agree that "I use to" is nonstandard inasmuch as, while used by the occasional unsophisticated student, it is rarely if ever seen in reputable publications or written by reputable writers. But "didn't used to" appears all the time--in magazines, novels, newspapers. If it is "incorrect," it is sure getting past a lot of well paid copy-editors. To get a very rough measure of usage, I Googled "didn't used to" (183 million results) and "didn't use to" (121 million results). I cite these numbers only to show that both occur a lot.

I'm much less interested in the right and wrong than in the why. Herb stated reasons why "used to" can get reduced to "use to," but I wonder how the "d" came to exist at all in "didn't used to."

Dick



On Tue, Jun 14, 2011 at 11:35 AM, Wollin, Edith <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

I have always thought that “didn’t used to” was incorrect, so I was surprised to see that some handbooks consider it standard. I think it is the pronunciation that causes the confusion and perhaps change. I have had many students write, “I use to” when it was clearly a past situation and needed “ I used to.”

Edith Wollin

 

From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Dick Veit
Sent: Tuesday, June 14, 2011 7:45 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: didn't use(d) to

 

Two quotations from recently encountered novels:

"There's bad blood now. Didn't use to be like that..." (dialog in Alan Furst's Spies of the Balkans, p. 102, Kindle edition).
"She didn't used to smoke around the kids..." (Kate Atkinson, When Will There Be Good News?, p. 126, Kindle edition).

So which is it, didn't use to or didn't used to?

A few usage guides I consulted prescribe "didn't use to," but others say both are standard. In my own writing, I probably would have used "didn't used to."

On the one hand, "used to/didn't use to" would parallel other verbs (laughed/didn't laugh), but, on the other, we're talking about a quasimodal, and with modals we can expect significant variations from other verbs. Pronunciation is no help--both "use to" and "used to" are spoken identically as "useta."

Thoughts?

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