Jose Carillo's English Forum

English Grammar and Usage Problems => Badly Written, Badly Spoken => Topic started by: Miss Mae on March 01, 2017, 07:29:33 PM

Title: The present participle instead?
Post by: Miss Mae on March 01, 2017, 07:29:33 PM

Should the present participle of "need" be used in the following lyrics of a song instead?

So, baby, let's just turn down the lights
and close the door
Ooh, I love that dress,
but you won't need it anymore

I really just have this nagging feeling that the line "Ooh, I love that dress, but you won't need it anymore" should have been "Ooh, I love that dress, but you won't be needing it anymore." But the song would lose its rhyme if the correction is really necessary! Should I have meddled with a song's lyrics in the first place?

Title: Re: The present participle instead?
Post by: Joe Carillo on March 04, 2017, 01:02:08 PM

Both from the grammar standpoint and given the literary creative license enjoyed by songwriters, the lyrics "but you won't need it anymore" are beyond reproach. Let us let them be and just enjoy them. After all, both the present tense conditional "won't need it" and the present progressive conditional "won't be needing it" are perfectly valid tense forms in that statement.

Title: Re: The present participle instead?
Post by: Miss Mae on March 05, 2017, 10:15:19 AM

Oh, so "won't be needing it" is a present progressive conditional!

Thank you.