English Grammar Workbook For Dummies

Life gets harder as you go along, doesn’t it

Irregular verbs seem designed to test your mettle, because they stray from the usual -ed form in the past tense.

Navigating the Irregular Forms

moves into fortune-teller land

what action is recurring

here’s the lowdown on the basic tenses

the roof fall on your head

Condition-contrary-to-fact sentences always feature a would form of the verb.

Condition-contrary-to-fact sentences always feature a would form of the verb.

Notice that the subjunctive changes some of the usual forms. In indicative, the pronoun I is paired with was. (See the section on indicative mood earlier in this chapter for more detail.) The switch to were in the first sample sentence tells you that you’re in contrary-to-fact land. In the second sample sentence, the had doesn’t do its usual indicative job, which is to place events earlier in the past than other past-tense events.