Learn English – Conditionals -type 2 and 3

conditionalsgrammartenses

  1. Just to save your time, I know the difference between type 2 and 3, but I got confused about the following statement.

-If you went to bed earlier, you would not be so tired.

I was thinking that, since the speaker probably means something unreal in the past (going to bed earlier), then we should use type 3:

-If you had gone to bed earlier, you wouldn't be so tired.

Or, is it so that type 2 and 3 can be used sometimes interchangeably? If so, I still suspect there's a slight difference in the meaning; in this case, what's the difference?

  1. Can we say ''If you had gone to bed earlier, you wouldn't have been so tired'' instead of ''If you had gone to bed earlier, you wouldn't be so tired''?

Best Answer

"If you went to bed earlier, you would not be so tired." to me means that someone is consistently going to bed too late and is now (or usually) tired because of it.

I would interpret "If you had gone to bed earlier, you wouldn't be so tired." as more of a one-time occasion where someone stayed up too late and is now tired as a result.

On your second question, "If you had gone to bed earlier, you wouldn't have been so tired" sounds better to me.

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