Use the subjunctive when a person wants someone else to do something, eg, I want him to go home. It can also be used to express thoughts, possibility or necessity. vouloir que to want (someone to do ...

Stephanie was here. I wish Stephanie were here. Tim picks up the dry cleaning. It’s imperative that Tim pick up the dry cleaning. You are on time. It’s crucial you be on time. Have you ever noticed ...

After a full-dress review of the subjunctive in the preceding chapters, this form of the English language should no longer hold any terrors for us. With a clearer understanding of its uses and ...

Sometimes, what might have been never stops mattering. By Jean Chen Ho I’ve always had an unstable relationship to time. Maybe that’s because in Chinese, my first language, verbs aren’t conjugated.

For grammar bullies “the subjunctive” is sacred ground. Reforms proposed for the British national curriculum in 2012 required teaching use of the subjunctive not later than sixth grade. People seem to ...

READING a story on the fate of European newspapers, your columnist was drowning in bad news—newsrooms decimated, advertisers fleeing—but then a strange sentence appeared: Even Rupert Murdoch, who ...

It is often bemoaned in Britain that English is going to pieces—and Americans are generally to blame. Whether you call it decline or not, the moaners are on to something: America has indeed produced ...

My $18 Associated Press Stylebook wouldn’t tell me. My $8 Strunk and White’s “The Elements of Style” wouldn’t tell me. My $55 Chicago Manual of Style wouldn’t tell me. “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to ...