than you normally would

[keannu]

What does this "would" mean? Is it a conditional mood as in "if you normally hold eye contact, you would hold another way"?

im76
ex)Maybe you've heard it before: When meeting someone new, the first few seconds are crucial. This is because people often make character judgements at first sight. Here are some tips to help you make a good first impression.
First, hold eye contact a second or two longer than you normally would.

 

[keannu]

Whenever I post questions related to "would", I feel kind of guilty as this seems to bother teachers, but why would "would" bother me so much? I remember some teacher said "would" is so messy that even some native speakers find it hard to define.
In Korean, there's similar words that I find hard to define, so if foreigners ask me what it means in various cases, I would lose my temper. But that's because I'm used to it from experience, but for English "would", I am not due to lack of experience in real life.

 

[emsr2d2]

It is hard to define. However, in the example you posted this time, it means "than usual". "Hold eye contact for a little longer than is normally habitual for you."

 

[Tdol]

It's a curious usage- you could replace it with do without changing the meaning much, but using would makes it more hypothetical than factual.

 

[keannu]

Thanks a lot. Just one short note, my humble opinion. As I learned from conditionals, an adverb like "normally" seems to play a conditional meaning "if you were in normal situation, you would do something".

 

[Tdol]

I'm not too sure what you're getting at here- could you give another example?

 

[emsr2d2]

Thanks a lot. Just one short note, my humble opinion. As I learned from conditionals, an adverb like "normally" seems to play a conditional meaning "if you were in normal situation, you would do something".

I've been trying to work out what I would normally (!) say and came up with the following:

If I am cooking dinner for six people, I normally start cooking at about four o'clock.
If I were cooking dinner for six people, I would normally start cooking at about four o'clock.

I'm really not sure that's what you're getting at though.

 

[keannu]

I just made a mixed conditional for "would" meaning "You would hold eye contact if you are in normal situation"(counterfactual or unlikely+predictive) as I thought if this "would" is a rare use, this composition is the only way to interpret it.

Sorry to confuse you, but driving home, I thought maybe the reason I get confused sometimes is that even native speakers can make a mistake or inproper expressions. Even if every single word, sentence, or paragarph is edited by thorough grammar & punctuation rules, there could be inproper expressions or editing mistakes as to err is human.
Even Koreans can make weird writings in Korean, so I guess I might have worried too much about the mistakes of writers that I needn't have.

ex) "First, hold eye contact a second or two longer than you normally would."

 

[emsr2d2]

I just made a mixed conditional for "would" meaning "You would hold eye contact if you are in normal situation"(counterfactual or unlikely+predictive) as I thought if this "would" is a rare use, this composition is the only way to interpret it.

Sorry to confuse you, but driving home, I thought maybe the reason I get confused sometimes is that even native speakers can make a mistake or inproper expressions. Even if every single word, sentence, or paragarph is edited by thorough grammar & punctuation rules, there could be inproper expressions or editing mistakes as to err is human.
Even Koreans can make weird writings in Korean, so I guess I might have worried too much about the mistakes of writers that I needn't have.

ex) "First, hold eye contact a second or two longer than you normally would."

I readily admit that the whole "counterfactual" etc descriptions of words, conditionals, phrases etc generally pass me by. "You would hold eye contact if you were in a normal situation" sounds fine to me, changing it to "if you are ..." doesn't.

Hold eye contact if you are in a normal situation.
You would hold eye contact if you were in a normal situation.

If I heard a native speaker mix the two, and come out with the sentence you quoted at the beginning of your post, I would not immediately think "That's an error". However, when you start to write these things down and analyse them, you can find all kinds of slip-ups.