@BrockOhBMA -

Sorry, but the function of the past perfect is not 'to intensify' the 'regular' past tense.

Your three sentences have totally different meanings, not simply different intensities, what's more you missed out the 'regular past': past simple:

"Somebody did something." - past simple - the standard and by far the most common past tense - "And then they did something else."

"Someone was doing something." - past continuous for a longer action - "So I went to see what they were doing."

"Someone has done it" - Present Perfect, which far from being more intensely past, connects the past event to the present. (In TEFL it's not even considered a past tense, but a present tense, hence its name) - "Good, so I don't have to do it."

"Someone had done it" - Past Perfect, for indicating that an event happened before another event in the past, and almost always used in conjunction with another verb in the past, usually the Past Simple. - eg: "So I didn't have to do it."

and to round it off:

"Someone had been doing something to the road" - past perfect continuous, for longer actions before the main past action, often used to explain somebody's or something's state. - "It had a nice new surface."

If you want some practice with narrative tenses, google 'The Tragic Tale of Ruddy Wee Hoody' (OK I admit it, it's mine)

I don't think that group nouns (team, government, Facebook etc) are really relevant here. I'm British so I almost always treat them as plural - 'The government are introducing a new law', etc, as do most UK newspapers. But I'm well aware that the majority of Americans are uncomfortable with that. Vive la différence.

But distance is an altogether different kettle of fish. I can't imagine anyone, from either side of the Atlantic say 'the distance are' - it just ain't English.

The only context I could see 'are' being used is in 'There are 12 inches in a foot'. or in answer to a question like 'How many inches are there ...?' But in answer to the question as to the distance between two points, personally I'd say, 'It's eight inches', not 'There are eight inches'

@Mediator
- The most annoying thing about pedants is that they are usually correct. - Only if you believe in some kind of prescriptivist bible. I don't. I side with those linguists who think that the measure of what is correct is what is 'well-formed': what is acceptable to the majority of educated speakers.

- My comment (about the UK) 'was well wide of the mark' - Do you have evidence to support that?

- "If I was ...... I would" is technically incorrect. - It depends on who you ask and your definition of correctness (as above). These example sentences are from the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary entry on 'if':

"If I was in charge, I'd do things differently."
"(rather formal) If I were in charge…"

The position of every UK-published TEFL book I've ever worked with is the same. The difference is not one so much one of correctness, but rather of formality. As I said I use both, depending on the situation and context.

According to the MWDEU, this use of 'was' alongside 'were' has been common since the 17th century - 'The success that the indicative form has had since has probably been abetted by the near invisibility of the subjunctive'. They include plenty of examples of unreal conditionals with 'was', by, amongst others: Byron, Robert Frost, Thackeray and Lewis Carrol (see Goofy's link).

Lastly, according to Michael Swan (Practical English Usage), the belief that only the 'were' usage is correct is much more prevalent in the US than in the UK. My comments are, of course, purely from a BrE perspective.

@Goofy, Hannah - Also from MWDEU p753 - 'The gerund, or verbal noun, ... is the past participle used as a noun'. While I agree that the gerund can also take an object, I would argue that the resulting gerund phrase does indeed still operate like a noun. Put it this way:

Smoking is bad for you - the subject is the gerund 'smoking'
Smoking cigarettes is bad for you - the subject is now the gerund phrase 'smoking cigarettes'

That the bare gerund cannot always be equated with a noun is, I would suggest, a bit of a red herring. The analogy of 'singing the national anthem' with 'assistance the national anthem' is therefore a false one.

I do agree, however, about the general acceptance of both forms - 'me' and 'my'. Although my impression is that most discussion concerns the gerund phrase being used as an object.

Take the expression - 'smoking at the table' - this could be a gerund phrase or a participle clause

My aunt doesn't like me/my smoking at the table. - gerund phrase
My aunt saw me smoking at the table. - participle clause

As I understand it Fowler and others preferred 'my' in the first example, so as to make clear that a gerund and not a participle was being used. For most of us 'me' is perfectly acceptable here, perhaps because we expect the objective 'me' in this position. And I agree with GWU that it is less about correctness, more perhaps about formality.

But ignoring GWU's argument about the validity of the gerund/participle distinction for the moment, what happens when we put the same gerund phrase in subject position (as in the original 'writing' example):

Me/my smoking at the table really annoys my aunt.

While accepting both as being perfectly possible, the 'me' in subject position does sound a bit strange (notwithstanding sentences like ''Me and Dave are going to the pub.", which I fully accept in informal English). So I would probably be inclined to use 'my' here.

Of interest to some, perhaps, is the necessary change of stress: in 'My smoking at the table ...' the stress would be on 'smoking', but if we said 'Me smoking at the table ...', I think the stress would shift more to 'Me'.

@GWU - Although I wouldn't necessarily go as far as you (although admittedly the CGEL does), in TEFL we also tend to talk about the '-ing' form, rather than worry too much about any gerund/participle difference. And in some instances, for example after prepositions, it is almost impossible to make the distinction.

@dramarama - I'm afraid your suggestion of 'The my writing of books will make me rich' is impossible in English, because 'the' and 'my' are both Class A determiners which are never used together. Not 'because it's the rule', but because no native speaker would accept it as natural.

According to the Bad Linguistics blog, all three candidates said 'If I was your prime minister', before the last election, which is hardly surprising, as that's probably what the majority of educated British speakers would say. I think I say both as the whim takes me. But then I'm simply one of the swine.

As a separate form, the subjunctive has been disappearing from English for the last 400 years or so, and in BrE this is really its only remaining vestige apart from a few set expressions, such as 'If I were you'. It seems entirely natural to me that 'were' in conditionals will go the same way sooner or later.

As regards foreign learners, in TEFL we tend to use the expression 'the unreal past' to talk about hypothetical conditionals like this, seeing 'were' as an exception rather than the rule (as past subjunctive is otherwise identical to the indicative). And an optional exception at that; although we do warn them to use 'were' in more formal contexts.

Unlike the perfectly named PerfectPedant, I revel in the fact that English is governed by 'Common Usage'; that, through the linguistic choices we make, we can all collectively influence the development of our language. It seems to me to chime perfectly with Anglo-Saxon democratic traditions and legal systems based on custom. As the Roman rhetorician Quintilian put it, ''Custom is the most certain mistress of language."

To add to AnWulf ... nor in the British army. AnWulf is quite right.
One way to see it is that a sergeant-major is a type or grade of sergeant, whereas lieutenant-general is a type of grade of general. The main nouns are sergeant and general respectively, so they take the plural, not the classifying word.

I think there's a lot of different stuff going on here: some of your examples, for instance 'Come what may' and 'if need be' are simply idiomatic (check in a dictionary); others I find very dubious, for example 'Be that true' doesn't sound right to me at all.

I think we often use a kind of ellipsis with 'why', as in 'Why the long face?', although, again, I'm not very sure of the naturalness of your examples.

The last two concern 'have' as a main stative verb (e.g. for possession). Here we have a choice (at least in BrE) between the 'Do(n't) you have ...?' and 'Have(n't) you ...?' constructions, a choice we don't have, however, when 'have' is a main action verb, as in 'Did you have breakfast this morning?'

My information (Swan - Practical English Usage) is that the 'Have you ...?' construction is used more in BrE, although it is often seen as more formal.So even in the UK we're probably more likely to say: 'Do(n't) you have' or 'Have(n't) you got ...'. Having said that, your two 'have' examples sound just fine to me. Which gives us three possibilities.

"stand (somebody) down - if a soldier stands down or is stood down, he stops working for the day" - Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (BrE) - I'm sure I've heard the order "Stand the men down, Sergeant", on British TV .
http://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/stand_1

In this case, the New Zealand Navy Commander seems be having rather a long day off. This story is from an NZ news site, so maybe the extension to "suspended" is newspaper speak. But it's quite a logical one. (Just google the quote above)

The line 'I want it that way' or a variation of it occurs throughout the song, not just in the chorus. Look at the first verse:

You are my fire
The one desire
Believe when I say
I want it that way

So it seems to be OK when the singer says it. I think it's the other person (not the singer) who is talking of a mistake, and that that mistake is their relationship. It has nothing at all to do with grammar (which would be a strange subject for a love song).

'I want it that way' simply means - That's how I want it, that's how I like it. And I can't for the life of me see how it's in any way grammatically incorrect.

Are you sure it's dove, not doffed. To doff your hat is when (usually) a man takes off his hat briefly as a sign of respect, for example to a woman. It's still done a lot here in Poland, where some men also doff their hats when they pass a church. According to my dictionary, the past is doffed, but maybe this is a regional variant.