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Smith and Bernhardt describe
mood as "the grammatical category that shows the degree of
certainty attached to a verb" (75). In other
words, mood is an aspect of verbs that lets us show some of our attitude about what
we're saying. This week we'll discuss the indicative
(sometimes called declarative) and the imperative moods.
Next week, we'll discuss the subjunctive mood.
The indicative mood
is used to make a
statement or assertion. It is the most basic type of
sentence. It can be used in past, present, and future tense.
Ex.
(Past) Bob saw the Martians
Ex.
(Present) Karalyn drinks the coffee.
Ex.
(Future) The dog will jump through the hoop.
The imperative mood,
on the other hand, gives a command. The imperative mood is
always used in the present tense with the second person
subject.
Second person sentences often have you as their
subject and speak directly to the individual reader. The
you in the imperative mood is often understood, which
means it is not written, but it's there.
Ex.
Shut the window. (You) Shut the window.
Ex. Clean your room. (You) Clean your room.
Ex. Wash the dishes. (You) Wash the dishes.
Writers should guard against shifts from the imperative mood
to the indicative mood or vice versa. These
kinds of shifts are often
introduced to add variety, but they usually end up confusing
the reader, who may misread the sentence.
Additionally, this kind of shift usually results in other
sentence errors, like tense shift errors.
Let's consider an example:
Teachers should consider simple teaching strategies for
getting students to read:
-
(You) Make them read aloud during class.
-
(You) Let the students read characters if it is a play.
-
(You) Give them a questionnaire to answer as they go
through the story.
Notice that the sentence that leads into the list is in the
indicative mood, but the bulleted list is in the imperative
mood with a set of commands with the
understood you. In order to correct this kind of
mistake, you would need to revise:
Teachers should consider simple teaching strategies for
getting students to read. They could
-
Make them read aloud during class.
-
Let the students read characters if it is a play.
-
Give them a questionnaire to answer as they go through
the story.
Adding they could takes away the
understood you and keeps the sentence (including the
list) in the third
person. In the revision, they becomes the
subject of the verb phrases in the list.
("They could make them read aloud during class," etc.)
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