You can’t please ’em all. Any journalist knows that, and anyone who writes on the English language should know it in spades, since there tend to be as many authorities on any language as it has speakers. Two weeks ago I wrote about the subjunctive mood and conditional clauses, words that revive grim memories of bygone lessons on English or Latin grammar. I got what I deserved.

One evidently learned reader denounced me for talking about the ‘condition’ and the ‘result’ (if..., then...), when I should have said the ‘protasis’ and the ‘apodosis’. Those 60-year-old memories tell me he is absolutely right — provided you want to speak Grammarian or ancient Greek rather than English. Several others, in contrast, suggested that the niceties of English grammar should be what I will politely bowdlerize as damned. And one or two, less forcibly and more precisely, asked, à propos of the subjunctive, why I was wasting their time on a bit of the verb that they never use.

Though I have some sympathy with that question, here is why. Granted, most often you will merely sound affected if you use the subjunctive in conditional or similar clauses. The great Authorized Version of the Bible does it, though not consistently: If the trumpet give (rather than gives) an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle? But that translation was made four centuries ago, and the good English of 1611 is the antique English of today. But happily the United States, whose first English inhabitants arrived in America around that time, has preserved another use which is both elegant and often more precise than the normal British English.

It involves verbs like propose, suggest, argue, urge and the like, or similar nouns and adjectives, such as demand or essential. Thus where a Briton would say I suggest that (or it is essential that) he should phone his mother, an educated American is likelier to use the subjunctive: I suggest that he phone.... This evades the ambiguity in the British version: does the British should mean that he has a moral obligation to ring up, or merely that it would be a good idea?

Of course, the Brit might simply, if crudely, say I suggest that he phones.... That’s unambiguous enough. But not all such sentences are. I argue that Britain provides more foreign aid than Russia: does this mean that Britain would be wise to provide, or does provide? Probably the latter, but not necessarily so. The American, in contrast, who argues that Britain provide is crystal clear: he’s recommending a course of action, not asserting a fact.

So the American usage is clearer, and may also be marginally shorter. But I confess that my strong liking for it does not really spring from either of those modest merits, but from simple personal prejudice; to my ears, it is more literate, more stylish, without being pompous. I just prefer it.

So I am delighted that this use of the subjunctive mood, which had almost died out in Britain by around 1900, even in the most formal writing, is now being vigorously revived, under American influence. Like many Britons of my age, I have little love for Americanisms in general: if Americans want to use some word, phrase or grammatical construction, fine, but that’s no reason why we should — as, far too often, we swiftly do. Yet for this time-honoured use of one neglected resource of my native tongue I make an exception. Thank you, America.

And I recommend that any Indian writer follow suit.