Timeline for Is it “If money were not an object” or “If money were not an option”?
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
12 events
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| Jan 17, 2011 at 22:29 | comment | added | PLL | The better version is “If it were no object” (this is a specimen of the rarely-encountered English subjunctive). In modern usage, especially colloquially, either “was” or “were” is acceptable. But until recently, “was” was very nonstandard in this formation, and in formal writing, some readers might still consider it incorrect. To anyone who notices a difference, “if it were…” will sound more educated. I can’t think of any definite reasons to prefer “if it was” — possibly in some contexts/groups it be considered pretentious or over-formal, but I’m not sure about that. | |
| Jan 17, 2011 at 19:45 | comment | added | Joey Adams | @PLL: In "If money was/were no object", is it correct to use "was" or "were"? | |
| Jan 17, 2011 at 5:18 | comment | added | Cerberus - Reinstate Monica | @PLL: That was exactly my position. We were correcting an intermediate Chinese girl's letter or something, and I suggested that "were" was better in her sentence, to which this guy indignantly objected that it was archaic etc. // You know, at first glance, I actually read "in my principled prescriptivist heart". I wonder what that says. | |
| Jan 17, 2011 at 4:53 | comment | added | PLL | @Cerberus: from what we read on the interwebs, I’d say “dead and buried” is quite an overstatement from you English teacher disputant — ‘if she were’ is still in pretty rude health, it just no longer holds the monopoly. But yes — while I can no longer, in my principled descriptivist heart, find cause to call ‘if she was’ incorrect, I still can and will state my opinion that ‘if she were’ is better — aesthetically, pragmatically, and for the long-term health and expressivity of the language :-) (And of course, feel free to re-use that google example!) | |
| Jan 17, 2011 at 4:12 | comment | added | Cerberus - Reinstate Monica |
@PLL: I am with you, buddy! Recently, I discussed if he were v. if he was with a teacher of English at an internet forum, and he called were "dead and buried", if I remember correctly. When I tried to explain the meaningful difference, he failed to understand. // Your search example with only -option added or left out is a great example for its clear simplicity; I am going to use that in the future (with your permission).
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| Jan 17, 2011 at 3:21 | history | edited | PLL | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
added 47 characters in body
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| Jan 17, 2011 at 3:10 | comment | added | PLL | Nonetheless, assuming the general trend of these numbers is at all meaningful, the prevalence in every case of ‘was’ over ‘were’ makes me sad! :-( | |
| Jan 17, 2011 at 3:01 | history | edited | PLL | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
expanded, laid out table
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| Jan 17, 2011 at 2:56 | comment | added | PLL |
@Cerberus: interesting! I knew it was strange, but not that strange. Indeed, +"money is no object" -option turns up over 5M hits, whereas +"money is no object" alone (which again should surely have more hits since nothing’s excluded) turns up just 700k.
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| Jan 17, 2011 at 2:49 | comment | added | Cerberus - Reinstate Monica |
Sadly, Google has perverted its search system to please bad spellers such that corpus frequency research is very unreliable and erratic, to the point of possibly being useful only when researching rare words. You can see it by doing this search: +"money is no object" -option -issue and comparing its results with +"money is no object" -"money is not an option" -"money is no an issue". You should get many more hits with the longer search, since it excludes only very specific phrases, as opposed to words; but behold the flouting opposite.
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| Jan 17, 2011 at 2:42 | history | edited | PLL | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
clarified opening
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| Jan 17, 2011 at 2:34 | history | answered | PLL | CC BY-SA 2.5 |