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1. 

   Love and Rock Music

   103 Kudos

   05/21/09

   Hey Kate, can I ask you a grammar question?
   
   I just left a post that had this sentence in it: "If this was a story I was reading on my own without trying to screen, I would've quit after two chapters."
   
   Now here's my question. It's subjunctive, so that first 'was' should have been a 'were', but what about the second? I tried and it didn't sound right - though heck, what do I know? Thus the question.
   
   P.S. - Darn it! Sorry I missed you in the chatroom.
   

   05/21/09

   Reply from writeonkate:

   LOL- Yay grammar!
   
   Well, your second 'was' is actually an auxilary to 'reading', which makes that 'was' part of a participle. Generally, you want parallelism in your sentences, however, my understanding of participles is so long as you remain in the same general tense, such as past or present, you're generally good to go. If we're looking at the prescriptive grammar of this sentence, though, I have to add this: 'without trying to screen' should have been set off with commas, since it's a non-restrictive adverbial modifier. ;)

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