Friday, March 21, 2014

Should have + participle

 We use “should have” to talk about past events that did not happen. It is used when we regret something we did or didn’t do.

1.      When you have bought a T-shirt or item of clothing that is too small, you would say, “I should have bought a bigger size… I bought the medium one, but I should have bought the large one.”

2.      When most shops are closed on a public holiday, usually I regret not having gone to the supermarket the previous day: “I should have known that the shops would be closed today… I should have gone yesterday.”

3.      Looking back at your choices in life, can you now see that you should have done something differently? Do you think you should have studied a different career or maybe saved more money?

4.      In retrospect we see many things that shouldn’t have been done, simply because of the consequences. Japan shouldn’t have bombed Pearl Harbor. The US shouldn’t have gone into Iraq. I shouldn’t have spent so much money over the weekend… neither should I have eaten that whole bag of Doritos.

5.      I shouldn’t have gone to bed so late last night when I knew that I would have to wake up at 5:30am today!

4 comments :

  1. Hello, I really appreciate your work, I try to come here as much as I can, but it look like there is no more PDF link..., I really miss it, where can I download this post in a PDF format? (just like before). Thanks .

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  2. Hi Ever,

    It's great to hear that you stop by here regularly!

    As you can imagine, the comic strips are not my work... And I simply use them under the "fair use" agreement for educational purposes. That is the premise. I decided to stop providing the PDFs because it facilitates the distribution of copyrighted material. I didn't have anyone contact me... but I thought I would rather play it safe so as not to run into any trouble. I hope you understand that :-)

    One suggestion would be to simply copy-paste the content of the post into an MS Word document... That way you can also modify anything if you'd like...

    Another fantastic option is Evernote. I'm not sure if you've heard about it... It's basically an app/ software application where you can store almost any digital information you have. Most desktop and mobile browsers give you the ability to "clip" an article from any blog post... or even the whole web page directly to your Evernote account. You could create a "Notebook" in Evernote just for these lessons... And then have them all stored there for reference. If you'd like more orientation about Evernote, please give me a shout and I will be more than happy to give you some pointers :-)


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  3. Frank , just thanks for your ideas, I'll try Evernote or Springpad as you suggest ;) they are great alternatives :D . Thanks again and I really appreciate your work here. Thanks for your time and lessons ;) .

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