Consider this sentence:
He said he would have called her, but he hadn't got her number.
Can I use "hadn't got" here, or I should use if clause like:
He said he would have called her if he had got her number.
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Sign up to join this communityConsider this sentence:
He said he would have called her, but he hadn't got her number.
Can I use "hadn't got" here, or I should use if clause like:
He said he would have called her if he had got her number.
The words "if" and "but" may be similar, but they aren't exactly interchangeable. The word you should use depends on what you are trying to say.
He said he would have called her, but he never got her number.
Paraphrase: He never got her number; therefore, he didn't call her.He said he would have called her, if he had gotten her number.
Paraphrase: If he had gotten her number, he would have called her.
The phrasing with "if" is a bit more hypothetical.
You can use an if-then clause. The correct way to say this is with the past perfect in the “if” clause, and the conditional perfect in the “then” clause:
He said if he had gotten her number, he would have called her.
("...if he had gotten her number" is the if clause and "he would have called her" is the then clause)
https://data.grammarbook.com/blog/verbs/if-i-would-have-vs-if-i-had/