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I know that the following sentence is correct:

If it rains, I will stay at home.

My question is if the following sentence is also correct when you are not so sure about what you are going to do:

If it rains, I would stay at home.

I've seen 'It wouldn't surprise me if it were true.' Above sentence is using "would" instead of "will". Is this a very special case? Or it is natural and means we can use "would" instead of "will" when we are not so sure?

Thank you in advance!

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  • What the poster is looking for is "If it rains, I might stay home."
    – Xanne
    Commented Jul 24, 2017 at 3:31
  • Thank you very much for replying so quickly. I think original example was bad. I should have written the below sentence instead of 'It wouldn't surprise me if it were true.' "I wouldn't be surprised if he gives us a membership." Above sentence is found in the following link: getyarn.io/yarn-clip/664bb77c-3fa4-420e-aa82-b5a4796d6e88
    – user59702
    Commented Jul 24, 2017 at 3:39

2 Answers 2

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After looking it over a little, I found that using would makes your other verbs take passive tense.

Your example has the past tense were being used which is why would is used. In order to change it to use will you would have to say, "It will surprise me if it is true."

If it rain(s), I will stay at home. If it rained, I would stay at home.

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I think that this is an issue of verb tense continuity.

"If it rains, I will stay at home." becomes "If it were to rain, I would stay at home."

In the other example "It wouldn't surprise me if it were true" with the word will would be "It won't surprise me if it is true"

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