ACT Hard English Question

Frigidcold
Mon, 07 Sep 2015 23:23:03 +0000

First, I’ll start off by saying that just as you think A sounds correct, I would have chosen D because it sounds correct to me. But, I have attempted to rationalize it because that website on would usage made me very skeptical of how much grammar I actually know.

The only conclusion I could come up with is that “would use” is a past unreal conditional phrase (http://www.englishpage.com/conditional/pastconditional.html and scroll down). That is, the use of “would use” doesn’t definitively say that he used the words, only that he would have used the words if presented the chance.

@farfarawaykontes