Contractions are part of the same drive, making the language faster to get the point across. Kids writing term papers that way is the fault of teachers, they failed to teach the kids the difference between casual and formal language and term papers shouldn’t be written the way you talk.
The reason that “movement” failed is because it was a fad not a movement, and more importantly it was a fad with only one subsection of society. It never came into general usage. General usage changes language, fads are bumps along the road.
The word irony doesn’t mean what it used to. Look again at that sentence I put in yesterday. The reason that sentence wouldn’t have made sense 20 years ago is a whole bunch of those words have had new meaning assigned. A browser used to just be somebody that browses, now it’s a tool to view the world on your computer. Mice used to just be rodents. Flat and screen never got combined.
Doesn’t really matter if I’m OK with it. That’s my my point. These changes happen, they’re inevitable. I can see how those happened, “would’ve” in speech became “woulda” in the 70s and then somewhere along the lines people tried to expand it back out but thought the v was an f and “would of” was born. It happens. No amount of complaining is going to make it change. Teachers can grade down for it and remove it from formal language, but in the common usage it’s gonna stay... at least until the next change. Wonder if it’ll become “would’f”.
In spoken language, ‘would’ve’ and ‘would of’ are homophones so for all intents and purposes it doesn’t matter which one the person thinks they are saying. But they need to know which is which when they write.