Open letter to the English-speaking world from a grammarian
Dear everybody,
I would take it as a personal favor if all of you stopped using the false subjunctive in your writing. I've tried to be patient, but no more. As of today, I will no longer accept ignorance as an excuse--let this letter serve as your warning.
The subjunctive mood in English is sometimes also referred to as the conditional, because it often describes a situation that would occur only if certain conditions were met. (The subjunctive mood is also useful when you wish to discuss a proposal, a request, a regret, or a demand.) The subjunctive, and with it the conditional verbs (would, could, should, and ought), do not describe situations which have already occurred in the past. English has a variety of verb tenses to address things which have happened, but the subjunctive/conditional is not among them.
For example: If I were a violent person, I would be tempted to slap people who use the false subjunctive. Luckily for everyone, I am not. See how that describes a situation where nothing has happened, because a condition for action wasn't met?
Here is the incorrect example that set me off this morning, from an article on CNN, about some cave explorers who became lost:
Would? Did this happen or not? Did they venture out to find an exit? Did they find puddles of water to drink? Well, according to this "journalist," no, they did not. A simple test to discover if you're using the false subjunctive: did it happen? If the answer is no, not yet, you could use a conditional verb. If the answer is yes, back away from the would. If something indeed happened, you need to use the past tense. The explorers ventured to find an exit. The explorers found puddles of water to drink.By 1 a.m. Sunday, 12 hours into their journey, the explorers realized they were out of food. At times over the next 36 hours, two at a time would venture to find an exit and try to stay in contact with the others by yelling.
The rest tried to take turns resting, using their backpacks to shield them from the cold floor. For water, they would find puddles in rock crevices or lick droplets from the ceiling.
Even if something happened on a regular basis in the past, you still need to use the past tense. Not When I was a kid, we would ride our bikes everywhere, but When I was a kid, we rode our bikes everywhere. (And Margaret Atwood--shame on you. You probably never got my letter, but you know better and using the false subjunctive for stylistic purposes is just tedious for the reader.)
Between text messaging, MTV, and the chavs of the world, English has taken a lot of damage in the last 50 years. Please, don't kick it while it's down. Sure, when you use the false subjunctive, people still know what you mean, but it's useless clutter. It's completely unnecessary in conversation, but it's nearly unforgiveable in the written word. It is the writing equivalent of including every um, uh, and like that we carelessly use in conversation.
If you were so kind as to follow these guidelines, I would be ever so grateful.
Redzilla
Comments
Hah! I've been guilty of using this in speech, but not in writing.
My own pet peeve: people who say "different than". Which is apparently almost everybody. I've even seen Adam Gopnik use "different than" in his New Yorker articles--gaaah!
My grammar is horrible. I always thought it was because I was shuffled around so many different grade schools that I just missed out on certain lessons. It wasn't until I was in a composition class my sophomore year in high school that our teacher realized that no one in the class grasped anything beyond the most basic elements of grammar. She had to take two weeks out of our schedule to give us as much information as she could without completely sacrificing her original lesson plan.
You should do a weekly lesson for us to help clean up the neighborhood.
[this scares me a little]
Yeah, I could use a weekly grammar course. I have a hard time grasping some of this stuff. I don't know the diff between further and farther and crap like that. I need the Redz to come around with her red pen and mark up my blog! for realz!
But one of my peeves is when people say lay down. They tell my dog to lay down. Even Elvy knows it's "lie down".
Now if you could get people to understand when to use "me" and when to use "myself," I would be most thankful.
If I knew what you meant, I would change the way I type!
::giggles:: Sorry, I couldn't help myself. I'm all for a grammarically correct world!
I admit to being a slacker lately. Bad Amy. I hate it when I leave comments on other people's posts and I see a big typo. I can't fix it and I think, 'now everyone is going to think I have bad grammar/puncuation skills'. And then sometimes I'm just goofing, but those times are obvious.
I promise to be extra careful, Ms. Redz.
if I knew you were coming, I would have baked a cake
I think the erosion of proper grammar in the media has made it difficult for those of us not grammar savants; there isn't a standard to look up to. *
* until now: Redzilla is on the case.
As you'll note, though, I didn't know you were coming, so I didn't bake a cake. The condition wasn't met, nothing happened, therefore the use of the subjunctive is correct.
As for the polite form, as in I would like a cup of coffee--that's absolutely a conditional phrase, because it depends upon circumstance and conditions. What is unspoken is the If phrase. In the example above, the unspoken condition is implied--If you're willing to oblige me, I would like a cup of coffee, or If possible, I would like a cup of coffee.
I'm so out of practice!
If I knew you were coming, I would have baked a cake is of course subjunctive and conditional,. but that's not what I meant by future-in-past. Here's an example:
He said it would take an hour. (future-in-past)
"It will take an hour," he said. (future in the quoted sentence, past in the sentence itself)
*lightly smacks lauowolf on the back of her head*
(god I hope I recognized all of the errors in that one!)
I also got a boost of larnin' me them there grammeratical parts from taking 2 years of Latin. You'll never be scared by the English subjunctive again after you meet this case in its full ancestral glory. Wary, yes, but not scared.
He said it would take an hour, but it took two. What he says doesn't make reality, it only implies possibility, and reality is free to depart from that. I feel like I should insert an evil laugh here, but I don't want to usurp Oxford GEU's right to do that.
Thanks for the reminder. I'm very guilty of that. I know to some people it might seem like your being nit-picky, but eliminating the superfluous woulda shoulda coulda does make writing more effective.
Now, of course, I'm going to purposely not do it to piss you off. Had you known what a smartass I am, you could have avoided this. How was that? : )
I also think it's only fair that we're granted amnesty during conversational speech, such as in our comments. Otherwise we'll be too frightened to ever speak to you, again.
'Nother smiley. : )
Again! : )
I'm done.
Thanks for the lesson on the subjunctive. I was unsure about that verb tense and have probably been guilty of past grammatical errors myself.
Or, just get rid of the "are" and say, "Where you at?"
That's how I roll. And I roll deep.
'Nother one. : )
Isn't that "deeply"?
Smartassing myself. Hee.
How do you smartass yourself?
bam! : )
The future "conditional," though, differs in one important way: the realis vs irrealis distinction. Some people call this the "real" conditional. When expressing something in the future tense, if it is something that you believe will happen, it's realis. If it's something you think will not happen or is unlikely, then it's irrealis.
I will go to the beach next week (even if it rains). (realis)
I would go to the beach next week (if I had a day off). (irrealis)
I mean, surely when we speak about the future, we do not know in advance what will happen, and yet we make statements anyway, constructing them in ways that reveal whether we think something will or will not happen. The example he said it would take an hour is merely expressing the same thing as "it will take an hour," he said using indirect discourse. The presence of would has no bearing on the speaker's belief that it would, in fact, take an hour. The speaker believes this to be true, even though he can not forecast the future. If the Oxford guide calls that conditional, it is a "real conditional," which is sort of an oxymoron anyway.
Of course none of this has any bearing on the examples from your original post, which are making use of would to indicate a "habitual aspect" in the past tense, as happens with will in the present tense.
I know for a fact that I'm guilty of incorrect subjunctive use, and now I have the means to tell when I am being erroneous. It would be nice if Vox had the Red Pen Edit function for Redz to go back and edit all of our posts. I'd be a class embarassment, I tell you!
Guilty. I have horrible grammar. :(
A weekly lesson is a good idea for dummies like me!
I am usually a grammar freak as well, but I have to say I've never paid much attention to the subjunctive.
I will now!
Please take my many many blog posts' / comments' grammatical errors with a grain of salt . . . ok?
I mean no harm.
Thank you!
Blood on the dance floor! heh. Must be the Tango de la Muerte. Anyway, I just don't think technical terms are that scary, and I'd rather say something true than something innocuous.
My point is this: That CNN article is not incorrect. It is not a "false subjunctive," and the syntax in no way implies that the events did not happen or were unlikely. That did happen, in the past, habitually.
Been there. I'm the spawn of the English professor. How about we teach people about the subjunctive tense first and THEN bitch about the false subjunctive.
If you was to do such a thing, I would be forced to whip some ass.
I'm just saying... it takes me there.
I used to be surprised when poor grammar showed up in top-tier magazines or Web sites but the way that journalism and publishing is changing, it is harder to find writers and editors in general--or at the very least, to pay them. More and more publications are accepting freelancers and often don't do much editing work once the article is received, simply because they no longer have the staff. The Net is great for some things but when it comes to the written word, it has created an entirely new conundrum. It's easier than ever to write and publish and unfortunately, many who do shouldn't be in the first place.
Great lesson btw. I tend to get lazy in my casual writing and this is a nice reminder of all the reasons why I should be more thoughtful as I spit out words on blogs and emails.
You always have the best posts!!
(cough) How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck would chuck wood? A woodchuck would chuck as much wood as a woodchuck could chuck if a woodchuck would chuck wood."
My little pet peeve is, "those ones" (bites lip). "Those" will do fine.
I also get that you don't like the style of the CNN piece -- let's face it; it is inelegant at best. If you were to write an open letter advising others not to use modal verbs when forming the habitual past, that would be an appropriate response. (But as that's an issue of style or personal taste, not one of correctness or accuracy, good luck.)
The problem with the CNN piece has nothing to do with the subjunctive or the conditional, except that it bears them a passing resemblance.
Geez, my pet grammatical peeve is when my daughter uses the word like as every third word in a conversation.
"I was like you know like thinking about like doing this like piece of art like that had like some reds like and maybe like some blues like in the like center area? Like you know? Like a real like work of like art?"
The English language suffers from far-flung distribution and numerous dialects, of which some are well-documented and some can only be described by sheer volume of common usage. We have nothing like the RAE in Spanish. I have a feeling that an attempt to create such a governing body over the English language would end in violence.
The CNN example here illustrates a poor stylistic choice from a writer who should be writing an easily-consumed piece of journalism. Whether it's comprehensible or correct is secondary to the fact that it's an awkward read.
Being a technical writer for a company that translates what I write into 30+ languages, I have had to learn a new set of rules. I'm the sort of person who reads Strunk's omit needless words and wants to rewrite it as be brief. Now if I leave a connecting word out of a sentence or use a conjunction, I face the wrath of my editor. (For example: "You discovered I'm a technical writer" becomes "You discovered that I am a technical writer.") The only way to translate millions of words into 30 languages in between the date the product is finished and the date the product goes to the shelf is to use machine translation as the first step. I feel like my own writing has become stilted as a result.
In Katra's defense...I was scared before she showed up to the dance. :-P
I waxed philosophic over in my own blog on the subject, but it's not as bad as I perhaps made it out to be. It's just harder to switch between the multiple styles. I pick up writers' styles like I pick up accents -- which is to say, unconsciously and thoroughly -- so sometimes reading is an even greater hazard than writing documentation. :)
Okay, I never really knew the term "false subjunctive" but I never used it!
Discuss amongst yourselves.
Disclaimer : I did not know this until my best friend, who is an English Lit professor, explained it to me. And everyone uses it incorrectly.
"Begs the question" describes a fallacy of logic, in which one of the premises of the argument presupposes the conclusion is true. The simple example often give is this: "God is real, because the Bible says he's real, and the Bible is the inerrant word of God." It's the equivalent of quoting a Spider-Man comic book to prove that Spider-Man is real.
So is it the MOVIE that proves Spiderman is real? :-P
I do have to say, that it drives me crazy when people say "literally". I LITERALLY was shitting bricks. really now. you should join a union.
As for Cranky's example--my advice would be "maybe it's time to visit a proctologist." Ouch.
This painting would be commissioned in 1856 - wrong.
This painting was commissioned in 1856 - right.
Rather than
Ms. Smythe, the wealthy patron, would frequently commission portraits of herself, which would usually provoke the most horrible fawning from the local artists.
Surely the use above is not nearly as unpleasant as the illogic of "used to" for similar meanings.
I would agree that today's misuses are tomorrow's grammar rules, though.
You mean an apostrophe isn't just advance warning that a final s is about to appear?