On Thursday Divino and I went back to our exercises on
“if-clauses”. We had stopped with this sentence “If he were (versus was) not
unemployed, he would have a place to live.” When do you use “was”, and when do
you use “were”? “This one is pretty simple,” says Ben Yagoda, author of “How to
Not Write Bad: The Most Common Writing Errors and the Best Ways to Avoid Them”
in his article “7 grammar rules you really should pay attention to” http://theweek.com/article/index/241295/7-grammar-rules-you-really-should-paay-attention-to
“When you’re
writing about a non-true situation – usually following the word if or the verb wish – the
verb to be is rendered as were. If you are using if for other purposes (hypothetical
situations, questions), you don’t use the subjunctive.” This reminder really
helped the two of us (tutor and tutee) to easily and quickly get these twelve
questions on if-clauses answered. We had gone over the topic together before,
but we both needed a reminder. However, after finishing the exercise we went
back to the newspaper article, and read the remaining six grammar rules. This
tutee is totally into these kinds of rules, and he remembers very well, what we
discuss in our sessions, and takes a lot of notes. He was wondering if he
should get the above-mentioned book. Since I haven’t read the book yet, I didn’t
know if I can recommend it to him…
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