A Subjunctive Problem

What's "contrary to fact" has become a loaded question

Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash

The subjunctive mood in English is tricky to use and even trickier to explain. Most grammar books offer only the general rule that the subjunctive is used for statements that are “contrary to fact.”

That guidance is not merely unclear: in our current sociopolitical climate, them’s fightin’ words.

Determining what is and is not “contrary to fact” could be considered the overarching challenge of our time.¹

You might say we have a subjunctive problem.

In English, the indicative mood is used for straightforward statements about reality (like “it is raining” or “vaccines prevent disease”). The subjunctive mood expresses “what is imagined or wished or possible.”²

These days, the subjunctive too often muscles in on what used to be reliably indicative.

This kind of takeover by the subjunctive is what happens in the particular problem case I want to complain about here—namely, the “would have … would have” construction, also known as the double conditional.

It’s more common in speech but does occasionally rear its ugly head in published prose. Here’s an example from the Cincinnati Enquirer:

Maybe the symmetry of those two woulds seduced the writer with a false sense of rightness—like a furry toilet lid cover and matching rug. It’s as though the conditional “would have” in the last clause of the sentence, which is correct and necessary, has encroached on the preceding clause, making it wonkily subjunctive when it should be indicative (“if he had played”).

The “if” clause in the above sentence needs to be indicative in order for the subsequent, conditional clause to make sense.³ I wish I could explain why. (I really do.) But I’m not sure an explanation would matter anyway.

It seems unlikely that anyone learns grammar (in any language) by consciously acquiescing to the rules. You learn how a language works by hearing and reading examples of that language used well, by which I mean logically.

So here are a few examples of correctly built “if” structures.

From Washington Square, by Henry James:

He remembered that fortune favours the brave, and even if he had forgotten it, Mrs. Penniman would have remembered it for him.

From Humorous Ghost Stories, by Dorothy Scarborough:

The marvel is that apparitions were so long in realizing their possibilities, in improving their advantages. The specters in classic and medieval literature were malarial, vaporous beings without energy to do anything but threaten, and mortals never would have trembled with fear at their frown if they had known how feeble they were.

And one from Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad:

They would have been even more impressive, those heads on the stakes, if their faces had not been turned to the house.

1. See

Brian Klaas

’s excellent post on political speech that deliberately detaches words from their meanings. I especially appreciate his takedown of the recent stupidity involving the word coup, since, in addition to being a professor and an author, Klaas is an expert on actual coups.

2. I like this phrase, from the definition of subjunctive offered by Scrivener’s built-in dictionary.

3. "Although the subjunctive mood is often signaled by if, not every if takes a subjunctive verb," says the Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation, by Bryan A. Garner. Here we go again.