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stuart1
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April 11, 2017
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Your Pain Is Our Pleasure
24-Hour Proofreading Service—We proofread your Google Docs or Microsoft Word files. We hate grammatical errors with a passion. Learn More
Your Pain Is Our Pleasure
24-Hour Proofreading Service—We proofread your Google Docs or Microsoft Word files. We hate grammatical errors with a passion. Learn More
Username
stuart1
Member Since
April 11, 2017
Total number of comments
2
Total number of votes received
0
Bio
“If I was” vs. “If I were”
Henry and one or two others have summed it up fairly well. The "were" used in place of "was" in some English conditionals is a relic of the Old English subjunctive. It preserves no semantic distinction in Modern English and can be dropped. It is still quite frequently used in a number of constructions, though, and has more or less taken on the status of a fixed expression or idiom. The notion that it is not used as often as it used to be isn't supported by a quick check of corpora I have access to.