Power and Influence

Review the grammar refresher and do the writing exercises to improve your writing skills.

Power and Influence

Past Conditional Inversion

  • Usage: Used for emphasis when talking about past regrets or hypothetical situations
  • Structure: Had + subject + past participle …. subject + would have + past participle

Negative Adverb Inversion

  • Usage: Used to strongly emphasise how rare, unusual, or shocking an event is by placing a negative word at the start.
  • Structure: negative word + auxiliary verb + subject + base verb

The Present Subjunctive

  • Usage: Used after phrases of urgency or necessity to show that an action is required or demanded.
  • Structure: Urgency phrase + subject + base verb

 

Examples

Had the CEO listened to the staff, she wouldn't have faced a company-wide strike.
Rarely do we see a manager handle a crisis with such total composure.
It is essential that the head of department sign off on the new budget before tomorrow.

Practise