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"If it should rain" or "Should it rain"; see English conditional sentences; as an alternative to the subjunctive, e.g., "It is important that he (should) leave"; see English subjunctive; The main use of would is in conditional clauses (described in detail in the article on English conditional sentences): I would not be here if you hadn't ...
As for shall vs should, my (northwestern US) ears prefer shall but the difference is very slight. Shall focuses on your magnimony, and you may already be half-standing when you say it. Should focuses on your social obligation, and you may have no intention of opening the window unless the other person says "yes". --Sluggoster 09:28, 5 November ...
In American English, the form got is used in this idiom, even though the standard past participle of get is gotten. The same applies in the expression of present obligation: I've got to go now may be used in place of I have to (must) go now. In very informal registers, the contracted form of have or has may be omitted altogether: I got three ...
The English modal auxiliary verbs are a subset of the English auxiliary verbs used mostly to express modality, properties such as possibility and obligation. [a] They can most easily be distinguished from other verbs by their defectiveness (they do not have participles or plain forms [b]) and by their lack of the ending ‑(e)s for the third-person singular.
A Grammar of the English Language (Oxford Language Classics). Oxford University Press. p. 256. ISBN 0-19-860508-0. Curme, George O. (1925). College English Grammar, Richmond, VA, Johnson Publishing company, 414 pages. A revised edition Principles and Practice of English Grammar was published by Barnes & Noble, in 1947.
The will/shall future consists of the modal verb will or shall together with the bare infinitive of the main verb, as in "He will win" or "I shall win". ( Prescriptive grammarians prefer will in the second and third persons and shall in the first person, reversing the forms to express obligation or determination, but in practice shall and will ...
The conditional perfect is a grammatical construction that combines the conditional mood with perfect aspect.A typical example is the English would have written. [1] The conditional perfect is used to refer to a hypothetical, usually counterfactual, event or circumstance placed in the past, contingent on some other circumstance (again normally counterfactual, and also usually placed in the past).
[1]: 322 Conversely, British English favours fitted as the past tense of fit generally, whereas the preference of American English is more complex: AmE prefers fitted for the metaphorical sense of having made an object [adjective-]"fit" (i.e., suited) for a purpose; in spatial transitive contexts, AmE uses fitted for the sense of having made an ...