Which is correct: “of course” or “ofcourse”?

Question

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.

Answer 1

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:

             BNC     COCA

of course   29651  100939
ofcourse        1      12

Answer 2

"Of course" is two words. I have never seen it as one except in typos and this question.

Answer 3

"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.

Answer 4

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

Answer 5

I just checked Merriam-Webster dictionary and it has ofcourse defined as a 'matter of course', i.e. a natural flow of events.