If one of my students wrote such a sentence while practicing writing sentences about things which didn't happen, but which, had they occurred, would have necessitated another condition,  or if the exercise were about using three or more forms of the same verb in a sentence, or using three or more different combinations of tense, mood, and aspect in a sentence, I would say, "Yes! You nailed it! Write another one!"  (I always use exclamation points when I talk to my students about grammar.)
 
Scott Woods
 

--- On Sat, 4/25/09, Brad Johnston <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
What does 400 years of K-12 grammar say about this sentence? Imagine a 7th-grader brought it to you. Imagine the bell is going to ring in 4 minutes. What is it and is it O.K.? What would you say?  
 
"We would have had to go dutch."
 
(We're not going, but if we had gone, we would have had to go dutch.)
 
.brad.25apr09.
 
My son walked out of the hospital cradling his newborn son, a single parent on Day One.
 
He called me and said, "What am I going to do, dad?"
 
I replied, "You're going to CALL YOUR MOTHER."
 
True story.

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