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I have been using the term , ofcourse, ever since kindergarten.

However, I recently stumbled upon a site that claims , of course, is how the term is correctly used and not ofcourse,.

I would like to seek the community's opinion about which is the correct usage of that term.

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  • 28
    Don'tbelieveallthosewhowanttoseparatewordswithspaces. YouandIareright,havealwaysbeen,andcanproveit. TheRomansusedtowritelikeus,andnobodyclaimstherewerewrong,dothey?
    – F'x
    Commented Feb 22, 2011 at 14:10
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    Can you point us to at least one of the "many novels"? I've never seen "ofcourse" in print.
    – ShreevatsaR
    Commented Feb 22, 2011 at 14:12
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    It is not alright to use ofcourse ;)
    – mplungjan
    Commented Feb 22, 2011 at 14:33
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    I use ofcourse alot.
    – xanadont
    Commented Feb 22, 2011 at 20:08
  • 5
    noone says ofcouse.
    – zzzzBov
    Commented Feb 22, 2011 at 23:52

5 Answers 5

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I'm not sure what novels you are referring to, but ofcourse is a typo. Wiktionary doesn't have an entry for it, and neither does Merriam-Webster or any dictionary I have checked. Here are the usage stats from the British National Corpus and the Corpus of Contemporary American English:

expression BNC COCA
of course 29651 100939
ofcourse 1 12
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"Of course" is two words. I have never seen it as one except in typos and this question.

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  • Technically speaking, this question has a typo :)
    – Lulu
    Commented Sep 23, 2020 at 7:44
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    To be fair, the spelling was deliberate in the question and therefore not technically speaking a typo. ^_^
    – Robusto
    Commented Sep 23, 2020 at 16:04
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Quoth the talking horse from a 1960s American sitcom:

A horse is a horse, of course, of course, And no one can talk to a horse, of course. That is, of course, unless the horse is the famous Mr. Ed.

I'd take it straight from the horse's mouth and write it thus: of course

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"Of course" is always 2 words, and is a shorter form of "As a matter of course". Furthermore, Google Fight says of course wins at 75 900 000 vs ofcourse which has only 521 000. If you Google it, half of the results on the first page are in the url, and the first result is another forum where this was asked.

Here are the Google Fight results: Google Fight — ofcourse vs. of course.

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    I'm not sure if of course and as a matter of course are synonyms in modern usage. The former might have evolved as a shortening of the latter, but somewhere along the way, they acquired a slight divergence in meaning.
    – Marthaª
    Commented Feb 22, 2011 at 16:52
  • @Marthaª I think though that that is as much that we just wouldn't use "as a matter of course" where we can use "of course" than anything else, so it would stand as a more emphatic statement than once it would. It's not far from how "if it please you" would stand as much stronger now that the contraction "please" is so much more common.
    – Jon Hanna
    Commented Jan 17, 2013 at 11:26
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I just checked Merriam-Webster dictionary and it has ofcourse defined as a 'matter of course', i.e. a natural flow of events.

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