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Teal lime Posted 7 years ago
Grammar

Lyn would have been sending texts.....

Please read the following passage taken from "My Autobiography" by Alex Ferguson. I will post my question at the end of it.

At home I locked myself in. Jason, my lawyer and lyn sent texts simultaneously at the point the announcement was made. Lyn would have been sending texts consecutively for 15 minutes. Apparently 35 newspapers in the world carried the news on the front page, including the New York Times. There were 10-and 12 page supplements in the British papers.

My question is this:

Why is it "Lyn would have been sending..." and not "Lyn would be sending..."?

In other words, isn't would have done used in conditional sentences such as

If you had taken a taxi, you would have arrived here in time.

Thank you

  

Top answer

", is apparently okay and means that 15 min. before Lyn and Jason sent texts simultaneously when the announcement was made, Lyn was already sending consecutive texts, and thus had already been texting for 15 min. This seems reasonable, since the announcement was apparently big news and had been expected, and the suspense had been building for several days before the announcement.

— Anonymous

  • ", is apparently okay and means that 15 min.
  • before Lyn and Jason sent texts simultaneously when the announcement was made, Lyn was already sending consecutive texts, and thus had already been texting for 15 min.
  • This seems reasonable, since the announcement was apparently big news and had been expected, and the suspense had been building for several days before the announcement.
  • Thus, Lyn was already texting about it before the announcement was made.
  • ", is apparently for stylistic reasons.
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3 Answers
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The sentence, "Lyn would have been sending texts consecutively for 15 minutes.", is apparently okay and means that 15 min. before Lyn and Jason sent texts simultaneously when the announcement was made, Lyn was already sending consecutive texts, and thus had already been texting for 15 min. This seems reasonable, since the announcement was apparently big news and had been expected, and the sus

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Another way of looking at this is that the presence of the modal "would" injects an element of uncertainty or doubt into the sentence. Thus, "Lyn would have been sending..." means "Lyn probably had been sending" or "Lyn might have been sending" or "Lyn apparently had been sending". So looked at this way, the sentence is entirely correct, and its "edginess" is just very sophisticated writing

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teal limeAt home I locked myself in. Jason, my lawyer and Lyn sent texts simultaneously at the point the announcement was made. Lyn would have been sending texts consecutively for 15 minutes.

My interpretation is

Lyn was probably going to be sending texts consecutively for 15 minutes.

I have no idea if that's exactly what th

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