Never should it be

It was more common prior to the 20th century than now. See English Language on Stack Exchange for more explanation. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group.

Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Ask Question. Asked 1 year, 8 months ago. Active 2 days ago. Viewed 1k times. Improve this question. Does your language not have not and never? Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Mohammad Mohammad 1, 9 9 silver badges 24 24 bronze badges. This is wrong, as it assumes that should has deontic meaning, but actually both shoulds are epistemic.

See my answer. I wasn't sure about this for a moment, because supposed can also have an epistemic meaning; but it is uncommon in the negative. Colin Fine I remember trying to put things into perspective for the asker according to my understanding of should have but it seems that to suppose was not the best verb to use. Thank you. Does that answer your question? Colin Fine Colin Fine The two phrases have similar meanings here. But I would really recommend you the first sentence, since the adverb of frequency used there emphasizes the "negative" form of the sentence indirectly.

Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Asked 5 years, 7 months ago. Active 5 years, 7 months ago. Viewed 15k times. Improve this question. Community Bot 1. Adam Hayes Adam Hayes 1, 1 1 gold badge 7 7 silver badges 20 20 bronze badges. Idiomatically, your second version is far more common.

But there's no "rule" - it's just a stylistic choice where it so happens nearly everyone makes the same choice. That's funny, FumbleFingers, I would use the 1st example since "have never" is more emphatic, especially spoken, than "never have", to me, of course. Kristina: But do you not have a "gut feel" for the established idiomatic preference, even though in this specific context you might choose to override it?

The way I see it, there's no specific "rule" here, so we're free to go either way. If you do choose to go down the "less-traveled" route, at least some fraction of your audience will consciously or subconsciously take that on board.

And if they're anything like me they may simply assume your purpose was to add emphasis even though that's not "inherent" in the word order. So it works that way, even though there's no actual reason. I mean the idea that we always tend to look for some subtle nuance when we encounter a valid, but not the most common sequence of words.