Hello,
I would like to ask you about the use of "would" here. When I'm reading this page, I often see "would" used. So how does it work? And if I replace "would" with "is", what's the difference?
We decided to look at how some of the UK press described this contender for goal of the tournament from Schick and so we’ll start with The Guardian who called it, ‘… a booming curler over the keeper’. The word ‘curler‘ describes the direction of the shot – the player curled or bent the ball over the keeper – while the word ‘booming‘ describes the power with which Schick hit the ball; a booming strike would be a really hard shot for example.
Well, if something is ‘picture book’ it suggests that it is something very beautiful – maybe almost perfect – and so a ‘picturebook goal’ would be a beautiful goal.
Hello Hyuna,
Good to hear from you again and thanks for the question.
It's also nice to see a question about one of our podcasts 🙂
Would is a modal which means that it can do lots of really interesting things (for example, offering a position, talking about time). So, in both examples above, the word 'would' is used to describe the shot if it actually took place/happened, i.e. 'this is what it would be like (if it happened)' - we are anticipating a future shot. Could we use the word 'is' instead? Yes, though this gives the feeling of being a little more certain in the claim.
Hope that helps and hope you like our new-look forum :-)Â
Damian
Â
Leave a reply
