English Language Learners Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for speakers of other languages learning English. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I tried to figure out how to say a sentence like this in the past tense:
I think that if he does that, he will be late to the party.
I want to write it in the past tense but I'm not sure how. I thought of something like that:
I thought that if he did that, he would be late to the party.
Could anyone help me with this?
Your second sentence is great. I thought that if he did that, he would be late to the party.
"Last night I thought that if he did that, he would be late to the party."
Adding in a time frame can help you determine the tense.
This expresses the idea that "you", sometime in the past, had thought about the consequences of the other persons actions, and concluded he would be late to the party.
I think either could be OK, depending on the context.
I thought that if he did that, he would be late to the party.
is the best phrase in general, and more likely used as an afterthought. For example:
I thought that was what you would do.
But suppose you tell me you are going to work late. Then I say to my friend:
I think that if he does that, he will be late to the party.
Because it refers to a specific event, this form is OK.
