📄️ Introduction
Uncertain events and situations
📄️ Ordinary structures
- If you didn’t study physics at school, you won’t understand this book.
📄️ Special structures with past tenses and *would*
- If I knew her name, I would tell you.
📄️ *if I were you*
Advice
📄️ Unreal past situations
- If you had worked harder, you would have passed your exam.
📄️ *if only*
We can use If only …! to say that we would like things to be different. It means the same as I wish … (see here), but is more emphatic. The clause with if only often stands alone, without a main clause. Tense use is as follows:
📄️ *if … will*
- I’ll give you £100 if it will help you to get home.
📄️ Other points
if … happen to
📄️ Other structures found in spoken English
would in both clauses
📄️ Other words and expressions with similar uses
Many words and expressions can be used in similar ways to if, and often with similar structures. Some of the commonest are imagine (that), suppose (that), supposing (that) (used to talk about what might happen), and providing (that), provided (that), as/so long as, on condition (that) (used to make conditions).
📄️ *unless*
Meaning
📄️ "in case" and "if"
Precautions