What's the difference between
- It had snowed in the night, so the bus didn't arrive.
- It snowed in the night, so the bus didn't arrive.
I think in the first sentence there is causality and the second it seems the two main clauses are unrelated.
Which one is preferable? Is there really a difference in meaning? Is the second sentence grammatically correct?
Best Answer
In the first sentence,
It had snowed in the night...
the past perfect "had snowed" implies that the night has finished, and thus implies that the bus that was supposed to arrive in the morning did not arrive in the morning.
In the second sentence,
the night might not be done yet, from the writer's point of view, and the bus that "didn't arrive" might have been expected sometime during the night. Not necessarily, buf maybe.
If one wanted to more clearly suggest that both the snow and the "not arriving" occurred on the previous night, one could say:
The interpretation also depends on how long you think the writer might have been willing to wait for a delayed bus before declaring that it "didn't arrive" (or hadn't).