> Dear Kevin:
>
> I didn't mean to sound so defensive!  And, yes, I
> think you're right, that
> when would is part of the verb the past does sound a
> bit more acceptable.
> I do think, however, that it has the flavor of
> pastness that is
> unintended--that perhaps it could be interpreted as
>
>                 I would have preferred that we
> waited a little longer,
>
> where the event of waiting is past rather than
> future. I think that the
> present tense version is unambiguous.

I think you may be right that the past form in the
subordinate clause is ambiguous.  But it doesn't
bother me that a form can be ambiguous.  Lots of forms
are.


> As an editor, Kevin, I would choose the present.
>
> Martha

This is interesting.  From the start, when I was
editing a sentence like "Would you prefer that we wait
a little longer?", it didn't occur to me to change it.
 It sounds great as is.  It's just that the alternate
form popped into my head, and I wanted to know why.
But as I started thinking about it, I realized that
this case did not strike me as a question of standard
vs. nonstandard, or even formal vs. informal.  I may
very well be wrong, and that's why I posted the query
to begin with.  My dialect of English seems to treat
both forms equally; in other words, I don't associate
any extralinguistic factors that would make ME, when I
speak or write, choose one over the other.

I'm interested to know if others share my intuitions,
or if this is a case of regional/dialectal variation.

Kevin Lemoine
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