Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related Grammar Question: Was or Were?

Is it...

1) She would have done it herself if she was male.

2) She would have done it herself if she were male.

I'd like to apologise for having no proper grammatical training at school.

I am by no means an expert on this field, so you might want to hear from someone who is as well. However, I believe both are possible. It sounds good to me either way. It probably has to do with being formal and informal, with the second one being formal.

Saskia

you want the conditional here - too early to say more coherently

but the grammar guys will

c.

I just found out what the grammar nazis would say...



I cut the last frame due to explicit language.

lol, Aromassa

and I was trying to avoid using 'nazi'

hastening to add that some of my best friends are grammar nazis and I am a better person for having submitted to their wisdom.

c.

/me comes riding in on her editing horse ...

the correct answer is "were."

When you have a subjunctive clause (using "if"), you should use "were."

Not at all surprised that Jax was there to educate us about the subjunctive clause (IF I WERE...)


I was surprised, however, to read that Aromasa cut the last frame due to "EXPLICIT LANGUAGE"
\

two questions left:
1. Where on earth did you find such a cartoon...
and
2. why on earth were you reading *whatever it was* that lead to you posting it up here....

I found the cartoon on livejournal in a community called grammar_nazis.

Grammar Nazis Debate Forum (showing full cartoon)

And thank you to everyone who was kind enough to answer my question. *group hug*

Sorry to rain on everyone's parade, but neither example is correct. The proper usage is:

3) She would have done it herself had she been male.

This is because the final clause describes an event in the past of "She-who-is-not-named" in the narration, and even though both "was" and "were" are usually past tense passive verbs, they're being used in the subjunctive, which use overrules those rules. Of the two examples at the top, the second is more correct than the first, but still not completely right. One way to change it might be this:

4) She would do it herself if she were male.

In this case, the decision to use one or the other would be determined by the time frame of the narration, not just by the rules of grammar.

The Grammar Commissar strikes again!