Peterson's get wise grammar intro Page 2
2 . Introduction
www.petersons.com
Get Wise! Mastering Grammar Skills
See that, Chi? You can't even think of anyone. Think about news-
casters and politicians and the characters on your favorite TV show.
Can you think of a cast member on "Friends" who doesn't speak
well? No? Neither can we.
IF I WERE A RICH MAN
Huh? What is that? If I were a rich man? That's a weird intro to a
grammar book.
And how come it's not "If I was a rich man"? Isn't that the
correct computation, or something like that?
Well, first of all, it's not correct conjugation because of condition
contrary to fact, which is one of those crazy grammar rules that deals
with the subjunctive tense (which you probably know about from
your foreign language classes).
Conjugation is what you do to verbs.
Computation is what you do in math, and
what's pretty sweet about this book
is...there's no math.
What's condition contrary to fact? You'll have to read the book
to find out.
intro.p65
06/28/2002, 2:19 PM
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