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Would it be correct to change this...

"He agreed to those changes, but insisted that if the team do not reach the objective by the deadline, the company must commit to implement all the modifications"

...into this?

"He agreed to those changes, but insisted that if the team did not reach the objective by the deadline, the company had to commit to implement all the modifications"

(Additional info: the deadline specified was a year after the discussion, and three years before the document)

tchrist
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Tom
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  • Well the sentence as a whole doesn't make a lot of sense. What does "it" refer to? [did not reach it by the deadline] – chasly - supports Monica Jul 18 '15 at 18:26
  • @chasly: sorry, hope it's better now, the line refers to a bunch of other stuff - the "it" is a reference to a specific development objective the team needed to reach. – Tom Jul 18 '15 at 18:34
  • In the US it should have been "... if the team does not reach ..." But I suppose this might be one of those UK/US things. – Hot Licks Jul 18 '15 at 19:24
  • @HotLicks In Britain, you could get away with using either do or does in this context. However if you expressed the name of a sports team e.g. Tottenham Hotspur, Australia, France etc you would normally say do. If it was The rapid diagnosis research team it could again be either - do or does. – WS2 Jul 18 '15 at 21:47

3 Answers3

1

It would be correct to change the first sentence into

He agreed to those changes, but insisted that if the team did not reach the objective by the deadline, the company had to commit to implement all the modifications"

In the second sentence the tense of the verbs is consistent.

Zan700
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  • OK am i missing something? You wrote that the second sentence is inconsistent, but your line isthe same as the sentence from what I can see... – Tom Jul 18 '15 at 20:30
  • @Tom Where did I write that the second sentence was inconsistent? – Zan700 Jul 18 '15 at 20:42
-1

He agrees with those changes, but insists that if the team does not reach the objective by the deadline, the company will have to be committed to implementing all the modifications.

or

He agreed to those changes, but insisted that if the team did not reach the objective by the deadline, the company would have to commit in order to implement all the modifications.

or

He agreed to those changes, but insisted that if the team did not reach the objective by the deadline, the company would have to commit to implementing all the modifications.

In the first and third example the company would need to decide on implementing the modification themselves.

The second example lets us know that the deadline has not come, and when it does the company's commitment will be required for changes to occur.

Dunnup
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-2

Time is not the issue here, it is the mood (or modality) of the sentence (clause in your case).

Subjunctive

This issue seems to come up quite often. I have already written a TL;DR for my explanation here

Grammar: Did Jim ask you whether you are a virgin? VS Did Jim ask you whether you were a virgin?

Community
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dockeryZ
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