question of the day
"May I" or "Might I?"
Don't know why I started to wonder about this this morning. Or, really, I don't know why it only occurred to me to wonder about this this morning (while composing a hypothetical sentence in my head). The happy outcome of this wondering is that I discovered that I haven't been grammatically incorrect all this time. "May I" and "might I," when used in present tense, are almost interchangeable (except "may" implies greater probability or stronger possibility or something). The past tense is a different can of worms, and I can't think of when last I've had to worry about the past tense may/might thing, but hopefully I didn't commit an error on that occasion either.
References:
http://wsu.edu/~brians/errors/may.html
http://www.kith.org/journals/jed/2001/11/25/179.html
http://www.englishgrammarsecrets.com/maymight/menu.php
Don't know why I started to wonder about this this morning. Or, really, I don't know why it only occurred to me to wonder about this this morning (while composing a hypothetical sentence in my head). The happy outcome of this wondering is that I discovered that I haven't been grammatically incorrect all this time. "May I" and "might I," when used in present tense, are almost interchangeable (except "may" implies greater probability or stronger possibility or something). The past tense is a different can of worms, and I can't think of when last I've had to worry about the past tense may/might thing, but hopefully I didn't commit an error on that occasion either.
References:
http://wsu.edu/~brians/errors/may.html
http://www.kith.org/journals/jed/2001/11/25/179.html
http://www.englishgrammarsecrets.com/maymight/menu.php