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Comment by acl | Hacker News Reader

It's "If I were the CEO of Posterous."

Sorry to be the grammar pedant, but this one always bugs me.

Although this bugs me too, it's not incorrect. It's perfectly understandable in American English, and "correct" in other varieties of English.

yeah, it's more den correct in Jamaica, maan! ;-)

They mean different things, no? If I were CEO, I'd do things differently. If I was CEO, I don't remember it.

I'd say you'd have a bright future as a copy editor waiting for you if you desired, but I don't think there are any bright futures left in publishing.

What about that big furnace up ahead? Seems pretty bright from here. It's getting nearer/brighter all the time, too!

Yes, they do, it's the "subjunctive":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjunctive_mood

And it's one of those cases where knowing a foreign language can help you think about English a bit more clearly. It's mostly vestigial in English (which is why "if I was rich" is so common), but in a language like Italian, it's much more widely used (I think that ..., I believe that ..., I want ... and similar sentiments all require that you use the subjunctive), and it has obviously different verb forms: "penso che sia" instead of "penso che e`". It appears from that wikipedia article that Spanish is similar.

You're right, we are dealing with two different moods. I'd argue that in this case the clause is subjunctive (contrary to fact) rendered with the indicative mood. This is increasingly common, and in many dialects standard. The question then is: do people really mean this in a "subjunctive way" or if the mood has disappeared entirely?

In the UK this makes perfect sense. (thinking about it I would probably us "were" but a lot of my generation would use "was")

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