Language Quiz

Here's a new quiz - though, as always, maybe there's nothing wrong.

From the Cassini-Huygens site, this description of a photo:

Curving wakes perturb the edges of the Encke Gap in Saturn's A ring. The culprit in their creation is the flying saucer-shaped moon Pan, shining brightly within the gap.

The previous quiz was:

When Verizon Wireless censored political speech on one of its mobile services, alarm bells should ring on the need for laws on digital communications.

This (as Barry said) is a mismatch of tenses. The main clause has a simple modal "should ring" which is in non-past ("present" though more accurately "untensed") while the subordinate clause is in the past tense (censored). English doesn't like to mix-n-match tenses that way (though for many languages it's fine).

For the main clause to remain "should ring", the subordinate clause should be in present tense as well (When Verizon censors). If you want the subordinate clause to remain in past tense - which you probably do, as it refers to a specific event - then the main clause needs to become "should have rung" to match.

If the author wanted the action of the main clause to be ongoing, then what's needed is an inchoative (action-starting) verb and a participle: "alarm bells should have begun ringing".

Another "solution" is to put the subordinate clause in the subjunctive past (Had Verizon censored, were Verizon to censor). But note that this solution, though grammatically correct, changes the mood (the grammatical mood) of the sentence by making it hypothetical or counterfactual. "Had Verizon censored - but they didn't" or "Were Verizon to censor - but they haven't".

And look here for Previous Quizzes, 40 so far.