The Sanctimonious Subjunctive Case

It is with trepidation that I write this post.  The last time I tried to explain the subjunctive case to someone, I was accused of being sanctimonious.  But today I received an e-mail whose subject line botched the Subjunctive case, and I’d had enough.  So I resigned myself that I was going to have to address my favorite verb case.

The e-mail said “If Obi Wan was President, these 4 things would be LAW . . .”  First of all, Obi Wan is the majestic dog who lives here with me and Film Chris.  So I was inclined to love this subject line.  (It was from the website where I buy his pet meds.)  But the misuse of the verb form made me cringe.  The sentence should read “If Obi Wan were president….”  The verb change signals that the statement is contrary to fact, one of the reasons to use the Subjunctive case. 

You learned about verb cases in English class in high school.  You may be more familiar with the use of cases, though, with the foreign language you learned.  But I promise you that a well-intentioned English teacher did teach you about the subjunctive case. 

I have always had a soft spot for my friend the subjunctive.  There are only a handful of reasons to use it, and the major ones are:

• Wishing  (I wish I were a rich man.)
• Contrary to fact statements  (If Obi Wan were president…)
• If statements  (If he were intelligent, he would have called her back right away.)

The main thing to remember, though, is that the subjunctive case requires a verb change.  Here’s a table, taken from Word Power , that illustrates the different verb uses from the Indicative case to the Subjunctive case. 

Indicative	Subjunctive
I was	I were
you were	you were
he was	he were
she was	she were
it was	it were
we were	we were
they were	they were

 

(What’s that?  You really didn’t pay attention to high school English?  Oh, your poor English teachers.  Anyway, the Indicative case is the case that we use when discussing facts.  “I am healthy.”  “You are bright.” )

Why do I love the Subjunctive?  For one, I love discussing wishes and ideas that are contrary to fact.  And I love that the language allows for such discussions, and notes that they are special and deserve special handling.  So we change “If I was a rich man” to “If I were a rich man,” so that the audience is aware that the speaker is in no way to be thought of as rich.   It’s a change of pace. 

It’s also, apparent to me lately, a little-known rule.  I’m certainly not trying to be righteous in bringing this rule to your attention.  I’m just trying to speak better grammar.

Sloppiness

My apartment tends to be sloppy.  I hate it, because I feel like general sloppiness leads to intellectual sloppiness.  So it’s a constant battle to keep clutter at bay, cobwebs swept away, and dishes clean.   It bugs me, but I am able to get past it and live my life.  (I’m certainly not a Neat Freak, nor is Film Chris. ) 

But what really drives me to drink is sloppiness in writing.  I don’t mean that when you write on my Facebook wall, I’m going to call you on your grammar.  (I will try really hard not to.   I promise.)  The writing I’m talking about is formal writing.  Business letters, e-mails, news articles, and (yes) blogs demand a higher standard of writing, in my opinion.   Sloppy writing means sloppy thinking, to me. 

So imagine how disappointed I was to read this article today and find the following sentences.

“The one drawback is that the OS is a pretty stripped-down, a Linux core with a web browser and a video playback client, and little else. No productivity suite, and possibly no potential for add-on applications at all.”

Now, this is a blog.  I get that.  I get that when it comes to blogs, columns, and other less hard-news type writing, there is room for artistic license.  I love when writers personalize their writing through style, cadence, and original thinking.  Sometimes that means bending a couple of grammar rules.  So keeping that in mind, maybe the second sentence wouldn’t drive everyone else as batty as it drives me.  But I really like complete sentences.  I really like subject and predicate combinations. 

It might also not drive me as crazy if the first sentence were correct.  There’s an extra article in there (a) and I’m not even sure which one the writer would keep.  “”The one drawback is that the OS is pretty stripped-down, a Linux core with a web browser and a video playback client, and little else. “  Or, the writer might have intended: “The one drawback is that the OS is a pretty stripped-down, Linux core with a web browser and a video playback client, and little else. “

I don’t know the writer’s intent, but I’m not terribly impressed by the writer, based on this post.  (Nor am I impressed by the editor.)  And if I’m not impressed, I likely won’t go back and read future posts.  And isn’t the repeat visitor the holy grail of blogging? 

You might be rolling your eyes and saying I’m being too hard on poor Christopher Null.  But Mr. Null has a public blog on an advertiser-based site.  He wants me to read his work, and he wants me to read a lot of it.  If his writing is sloppy, I may not.  Sloppy writing?  Sloppy thinking.  (That was artistic license there, the two phrases without verbs.)

Maybe I just like grammar too much.  You can call me a Grammar Neat Freak, because I’ve surely never been accused of being an actual Neat Freak.