If this were true or if this was true

Question

I’ve read a little about subjunctive mood but I’m still not sure on the correct usage of was and were.
The following excerpt is heavily edited so that when I submit this for my thesis later, plagiarism software doesn’t find a match on the internet and think that I’ve copied from here.
If I were to say:
Author1 (2012) suggested that subjects can have trouble guessing how long images appear on screen. Author2(2013) reported that practice allows subjects become more accurate with these guesses. These ideas can generalise to other elements such as guessing how fast the images move. If this was true, then one would expect that etc.

What I’m stuck on is “if this was true”.
Is it, “if this were true” or “if this was true”???
Thanks to anyone who can help.

Sica · Accepted Answer

'Were' is mostly used in the subjective mood, I think. Though sometimes I catch 'was' in speech, I still prefer to use 'were'.

Anonymous · Answer

www.quora.com/Which-is-correct-I-wish-it-was-were-true :

"[...] In conditional sentences where the condition is unreal or not yet real and in that clauses after to wish, use were: I wish it were true that he loved me. Were is also used following "as if" and "as though": The toddler wore the towel proudly, as though it were a Superman cape. Were can also be part of fixed expressions: as it were, if I were you. These sentences are in the subjunctive mood, used mainly to express a speaker's attitude about the likelihood or reality of a situation.

If the sentence was in the indicative mood, then a sentence would read like this: I wish she was coming to the party. Was has many other uses: The viewing audience wanted to know if the actress was pregnant. So, the traditional rule requires one to use were rather than was in a contrary-to-fact statement that follows the verb wish. Though many still use this "rule", the indicative was in such clauses can be found almost as often."

See also:

https://www.dictionary.com/e/wish-it-were-vs-was/

'Was' and 'Were' are both past tense forms of the verb 'to be'. On Quora some are arguing they'd use 'was' as present tense subjunctive and were as past tense subjunctive. But that's nonsense, since was is also past tense. The difference is, for the first and third person singular you use 'was' , thus 'I was' and 'he/she/it was', but you use 'were' for the second person singular and the plural, so for 'you were' and 'we/you/they were' . Both forms are evidently past tense versions of 'to be'.

And for the subjunctive mode you use 'were' , thus whenever you could replace was/were with 'would be' , expressing a wish, an assumption or a fictional situation.

You can't use 'was' for it, as it already expresses the past tense of 'to be' in e.g. sentences like 'it was true' . See what happens when you just add 'what he said' , talking to another person about something that someone else had said and that turned out to be(come) true in this situation back in the past (maybe not anymore true, but it was true back then). Not just were true, but in fact was true.

As you can see, it could be confused with this common 'was'subjunctive mode, which is plain wrong grammar, because it could lead to misunderstandings if it were correct. Would be, I mean. Like in'He said, she cheated on him, and he's right. Imagine, it was true! She really cheated on him!' Now try to figure out what mode this 'was' represented, subjunctive or ... fact? I'm sure many of these subjunctive was-users would instinctively not understand the real meaning of the imagine-part. It would already sound like a subjunctive to them.

But following the correct grammar, this 'was' does not represent any subjunctive mode at all, it cannot and will not if used correctly, because it already represents a simple past tense and you were just asked to imagine that this, what the other person had just said, was really true! Imagine! In this case not wishful thinking, not a mere assumption, not fiction but fact.

If it was wishful thinking and you wanted someone to just imagine that this were true - which is not true (yet), just a wish, an imagination, an assumption - you had to use 'were' instead, there's no other way, because 'was' has already been taken to express something entirely differently. Right?

That's what grammar is for: to clarify speech. To also express moods (not just modes). Might become more and more irrelevant to people who use emojis to express moods. But mixing all rules up leads to confusion or at least to very imprecise language. It ruins everything, so stick to the established rules and forget about common speech of people who don't know it any better, especially in times of constantly raping languages in stupid chats and text messages. And you certainly don't want to use emojis in business letters or applications to express something a literate person had verbs for. Oops.

If this were true or if this was true

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