Used to

[pne]

What spelling do you use in the following sentences?

NB For the purposes of grammar, please answer with what you would say (i.e. I'm looking for best written approximation of spoken English, not "standard written English" answers).

Also, I see that the "When it started out" sentence is not a good example; please disregard the exact wording and choose what you would use for the negative of "used to". (Can anyone suggest a good example? "When we were kids, we didn't used to have this sort of thing", perhaps? I can't think of a good example off the top of my head.)

And in general, I'm not asking whether you'd use the exact wording in a given sentence, but trying to elicit which form of "used to" you'd use in a given situation.

[Poll #430362]

Comments

[pne.livejournal.com]

When I said "pick what you'd say, not what you'd write", I was going more by grammar (choice of words and/or word order) than spelling -- so not necessarily "yooceta".

To represent the phrase you use, do you think it would be better to write "used to", "use to", or something else? Perhaps a single word?

...does that help any?

[kutsuwamushi.livejournal.com]

That does clear it up, and I'll change my answer. I do think of the word I use as "used", not "use"--and I'll write it that way, too.

[pne.livejournal.com]

I had a similar time picking some of the choices as well (which, in part, led to this poll), since in "I used to go skiing" and "I didn't use[d] to go skiing", the "us___ to" part sounds identical to me (as you say, the |d| is not separately enunciated), yet from grammatical considerations, I'd be inclined to spell the latter "use" (on the pattern of things such as "I used the book" / "I didn't use the book"). But that leaves me with a verb form spelled "use" but pronounced with /s/ at the end, which feels strange.

Yet I'd still be inclined to say that if I use those constructions, they should be spelled "used" in the positive" and "use" in the negative.