A reader, Mr. Rosauro Feliciano, expressed his appreciation for my March 24, 2014 column in
The Manila Times on the perfect tenses in the passive voice, then asked if he should use “if” or “had” in the following sentence:
“My son would have been an alumnus of the PMA class of 2007 (if, had) he was not sent to West Point after the plebe year at PMA.”
He also asked if that sentence is constructed correctly.
My reply to Mr. Feliciano: That sentence is in the past-perfect conditional form of the passive voice, and it can be constructed in two ways.
Using “if”: “My son would have been an alumnus of the PMA class of 2007
if he had not been sent to West Point after the plebe year at PMA.”
Or using “had”: “My son would have been an alumnus of the PMA class of 2007
had he not been sent to West Point after the plebe year at PMA.”
The construction using “had” is my personal preference because I find it more elegant and better sounding.
For a more comprehensive discussion of sentences of this type, I suggest you check out this posting of mine in the Forum:
“Do better than a calculated guess in handling conditional sentences”.
