it were

Leonardo   Wed Aug 30, 2006 11:13 am GMT
When could I (or should I) use "it were" as in the following sentende?

"Certainly for admirers of its star, the consistently reliable Aaron Eckhart, who plays Nick Naylor, the fast-jiving, fast-running cigarette lobbyist who holds the story together even as he almost falls apart, there is something rather nice about lighting up together, as it were, even by proxy."
Uriel   Sun Sep 03, 2006 9:56 am GMT
"As it were" in this sense means the same thing as "in a manner of speaking" -- calling attention to the fact that you are using an ironic metaphor (lighting up together with a cigarette lobbyist).
Leonardo   Mon Sep 04, 2006 11:20 am GMT
Thank you
Robin   Mon Sep 04, 2006 8:32 pm GMT
I put this sentence in 'Word' and then did a Grammar and Spelling check. I was hoping it would say something like: This sentence is much too long.

I find sentence like that, quite difficult to read. I think that it is much better to have much shorter sentences. Sentences that only contain one idea.

"Certainly for admirers of its star, the consistently reliable Aaron Eckhart, who plays Nick Naylor, the fast-jiving, fast-running cigarette lobbyist. Nick Naylor holds the story together even as he almost falls apart. There is something rather nice about lighting up together, as it were, even by proxy."
Uriel   Wed Sep 06, 2006 2:44 pm GMT
what kind of question is this
Leonardo   Wed Sep 06, 2006 8:14 pm GMT
Uriel, I was having problems with these sentence because "it were" sounded a little strange to me. I couldn't find anything about it. I wanted to hear something about it from you.
Ken   Mon Sep 11, 2006 3:09 pm GMT
"it were" is in the subjunctive mood. Uriel has a good practical explanation. The subjunctive mood appears is several languages and is used to express a condition that is improbable or impossible. Thus the old song "I wish I were a princess" which is particularly unlikely in my case.
Uriel   Mon Sep 11, 2006 4:09 pm GMT
This isn't mine:

Uriel Wed Sep 06, 2006 2:44 pm GMT
what kind of question is this

As you can probably tell form the lack of capitalization and punctuation.


Anyway, I use "as it were", "if it were me" etc. in normal speech. It grates on me to hear people replace "were" in those cases with "was", as if they were saying "it was" or "I was" -- the "were" is a special usage that would be ungrammatical in most sentence constructions, but in the subjuctive, as Ken points out, it IS the correct one.
Travis   Tue Sep 12, 2006 7:52 am GMT
>>Anyway, I use "as it were", "if it were me" etc. in normal speech. It grates on me to hear people replace "were" in those cases with "was", as if they were saying "it was" or "I was" -- the "were" is a special usage that would be ungrammatical in most sentence constructions, but in the subjuctive, as Ken points out, it IS the correct one.<<

I have to agree, and I myself tend to find the use of "was" where I would expect "were" to be rather off in the very least if not somewhat grating. Note though that I will use "was" on occasion in such cases, but such has a special meaning in that it is explicitly past tense and often implies perfect aspect, unlike "were".