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Is this sentence correct?

"I would be going on a vacation."

I tried searching for similar sentences online and came across Conditional tenses. But from what I understand they have two clause - the 'if' and the main clause.

So if the sentence was,

"If I completed my work, I would be going on vacation."

it probably would have been correct. But I am unsure if "I would be going on vacation" is correct.

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    What do you mean by tense? Please edit your question to say what you mean. There are only two tenses in English: past and nonpast. Although would is in origin the backshifted version of will, it is not thought of as being in the past tense these days. Modals have no tense, and so neither do the three verbs in your sentence. If by tense you mean dozens and dozens of multi-word constructions that are not morphological inflections of a single word, then it is unlikely that we will be able to answer whatever you are expecting here. You might try our sister site for English Language Learners instead.
    – tchrist
    Commented Jul 10, 2019 at 5:15
  • Without seeing more surrounding context, it is difficult to say.
    – tchrist
    Commented Jul 10, 2019 at 6:39
  • I am not sure what you mean by surrounding context? I basically have a list of sentences that I have to classify as 'present', 'past' and 'future' programmatically. All the sentences are independent of each other and one of the sentences is of the form - "I would be going on a vacation." I am not sure if the sentence is right.
    – anshu
    Commented Jul 10, 2019 at 6:50
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    “I was so excited by the news. Finally, I would be going on vacation!”
    – tchrist
    Commented Jul 10, 2019 at 6:58
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    The sentence is perfectly grammatical by itself. It is in the "present continuous conditional" tense. The conditional itself ("if clause") does not need to be part of the same sentence.
    – TypeIA
    Commented Jul 10, 2019 at 7:06

1 Answer 1

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Yes, but only in a specific context.

"Would" is the past tense of the verb will. That would make your sentence incorrect, because "be going" is future tense.

However, "would" can also be used to indicate the consequence of an imagined event or situation, so it can be future-looking but only if you include a condition, for example:

I would be going on a vacation if only I had a passport.

If that isn't your intention, then your sentence is incorrect and you probably mean to say:

I will be going on a vacation.

or even

I am going on a vacation.

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