Pseudo-Subjunctive 'Were'

THEN A HYPERCORRECTION1 of the worst sort bids fair to help in the WV preservation of an obsolescent formal indicator, the situation can only be called ironical. In the ever so careful substitution of were for was in if clauses2 in the indicative mood, precisely such a situation exists. 'I wondered if the stencil were ready,' Professor Tom, Dick, or Harry will say to a secretary, with no danger of being corrected. Not even the most recent study of the subjunctive mood in English draws attention to this phenomenon.3 Yet it is no rarity. Teachers, impromptu speakers, even formal speakers who do not read from prepared lectures-all these and other types of educated purveyors of the spoken word from time to time reveal the same failing as they strain for correctness. Reacting puritanically to the impulse of if, they say were instead of was. As will be shown below, journalists and writers of fiction, even fiction of very high quality, are also inclined to make the unnecessary substitution of were for was.