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

[tungol.livejournal.com]

I put "use to" where I pronounce [just@] (or [justu]) and "used to" where I pronounce [juzd t@] or [yuzd tu]. I actually tend to think of /just@/ as being a single word, while /juzd tu/ is simply a combination of "used" and "to". As far as I'm concerned, /just@/ does not contain a form of the verb "use".

For the "This program is really bad..." option, I put something else, because I think I'd say [just@], but you didn't put "use to" as an option. I might possibly also say "did use to" if I were being emphatic, but it seems less usual. For the "When it started out..." option, I put "Didn't use to", which I think is how I'm most likely to say it, but I wouldn't be surprised if I could also say "use to not". (Actually, I was thinking of conducting a bit of a survey on that point too.)

Not sure I answered in accordance with how you intended the poll, but hopefully I at least explained myself well enough to be useful.