it would be useful - present tense?

thomas615 said:

I read this sentence in an article.

Remember to start all sentences with a capital letter and to put a period, question mark or exclamation mark at the end of each sentence!
.
It would be of value to learn what these activities involved and whether he had been misleading his doctors regarding his injuries.

Is "would be of value" present tense? yes
(As "yes" is not a sentence, it doesn't need capitalization or punctuation.)

Can one use "will be of value"? yes
Without any context, the two sentences have the same meaning. Sometimes "would" is conditional, but it often isn't conditional.

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2006 said:

Is "would be of value" present tense? yes

It is not present tense.
'It is' is present tense.

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2006 said:

What tense is it?

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fivejedjon said:

That depends on which grammar you read.
I am not a grammarian; I am just giving my impression.
Some authorities consider that will and would are two modals that have no tense forms as such. I am not suprised to hear that, especially for "would".

Others consider that would is the past-tense form of will. As you well know, sometimes it is. Sometimes it clearly isn't, as in thomas615's sentence..

Some traditional grammars consider will + bare infinitive to be the future tense in English.
That's clearly so.

I go to Chicago every week. (present tense)
I will go to Chicago every week. ('future tense')


Will + bare infinitive has been referred to as a conditional form.
That surprises me. Or did you mean 'would' and bare infinitive?

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2006 said:

Why I said "would be of value" is present tense is because it is not past tense and neither is it future tense or conditional.
That does not make it a 'present' tense.

"It would be of value to learn..." means 'I think we should know...". It expresses an opinion in the present.
If I were rich, I'd be happy. That expresses a view about the present, but 'were' is still a past-tense form.

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2006 said:

Why I said "would be of value" is present tense is because it is not past tense and neither is it future tense or conditional.
That does not make it a 'present' tense.
Theoreticaly that is true, But I don't think "It would be of value" is any more tenseless than the following present tense 'sentences'.

It (can)(should)(might)(must)(could)(would) be the answer.

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