The Writer's Workbench

[cornutt]

I'm starting this thread as a place where we can discuss and trade tips on any issues that we come across in writing: construction, grammar, vocabulary, style, language issues, whatever.  And I'll start it out with a question:

When you write a sentence like "X is happening" or "X happens", that's the indicative or assertive tense.  When you write "X is supposed to be happening", what is the name of that verb tense?  I can't think of the word, and I haven't been able to tease it out of Google.

[elisedance]

I think that would be subjunctive

But I am not sure - hard enough to get the grammar right let alone know what I'm doing...

[Bordertangoman]

I think that would be subjunctive

But I am not sure - hard enough to get the grammar right let alone know what I'm doing...

that sounds right but I'm not a grammarian; but if something is supposed to be happening then its not and the tense-ion builds.

Its something to do with the difference between the future indicative and future subjunctive;
"If I were to understand what I have just wrote then I would be a wiser person."

[elisedance]

yeah.  right.

[Bordertangoman]

yeah.  right.

thou doubting Dinah! get thee to a grammary

[Lioness]

yeah.  right.

thou doubting Dinah! get thee to a grammary

hehe

I don't actually know the names of tenses and whatnot, but I can tell if something's grammatically correct or not. I'm just good like that.

[cornutt]

Subjunctive!  That's the word I was stuck on.  Thanks. 

Why would anyone care what it's called?  Well, I've got an idea kicking around for a white paper on software project management.  It has to do with the difference between what was supposed to happen and what actually did happen, and the non-usefulness of most project management tools in relation to the latter. 

[Bordertangoman]

ah the law of unintended consequences......

story of my life

[Lioness]

Is it wrong that I read Eats, Shoots & Leaves and found myself not only disagreeing with the lack of the Oxford comma in the title, but also with several of her punctuation examples? The woman does not know how to use either semicolons or normal colons, yet she insists on informing the world.

[Bordertangoman]

yes its wrong..

the comma's position is part of a joke....

[elisedance]

Here's something interesting from a post by Andrew N. Carpenter on FB:

It dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae.

[cornutt]

Makes you wonder if dyslexia is really just an aspect of normal brain function that has somehow become over- or under-active.  The first thing I'd want to know is whether this is particular to English, or if it's common to all languages that employ phonetic alphabets.  Time to do a little Googling.