The Subjunctive Mood
The quiet mood of English — for what is demanded, what is imagined, and a handful of phrases frozen since Shakespeare. Learn where the verb drops its ending and why.
Choose a type. A context.
Five types, three contexts — 15 hand-built sentences. Watch the verb shed its ending the moment something is demanded, imagined, or simply frozen in place.
Got the pattern? Jump to the practice →
The rules — with examples
English has three moods. The indicative states facts, the imperative gives orders — and the subjunctive handles everything that is demanded, imagined, or simply frozen in an old phrase.
Three subjunctives, one base form
It is vital that she be informed.
She acts as if she were in charge.
Come what may… So be it.
The base form is the infinitive without ‘to’. It takes no -s in the third person (he resign), no tense (demanded that he resign), and no ‘do’ in the negative (that he not resign). The subjunctive is not a tense — it is a mood, and it never changes shape.
What triggers the subjunctive
The ‘suggest’ trap
The test: ask whether somebody wants something to happen. If yes, use the base form. If the verb is only reporting, indicating or observing — the data suggest, the report indicates, she said — keep the indicative. The same verb can go both ways: insist that he be told (a demand) vs. insist that he was told (a claim about a fact).
American and British English
For exams: the base form is accepted everywhere and is the safer choice in Cambridge writing. If you meet should + base form in a British text, read it as the same meaning — not as an error.
Fossilized subjunctives worth knowing
Do not take these apart. They are survivals from an older English in which the subjunctive was ordinary. Learn each one as a single unit — the verb never agrees, never takes a tense, and never accepts do.
Trigger words at a glance
Why it sounds strange: he resign, she be and each student submit look like mistakes because the subjunctive is invisible everywhere else — every other person and tense is identical to the indicative. The third-person singular present and the verb be are the only places English still shows the mood at all.
Practice & score yourself
Ten questions — five multiple choice, five gap-fill. Instant scoring and a short explanation for every answer.
The one rule to remember
When somebody demands that something happen, the verb loses its ending: that he resign, that she be told, that they not wait. When something is imagined, be becomes were for every person: if I were you. Everything else — be that as it may, come what may — is a fossil, learned whole.