had better plus past tense?

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Nov 18, 2010
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Romanian
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hello everybody,
i have a problem with the use of "had better".
i found nothing on the subject in the grammar books i read in terms of what comes after "had better". like in this sentence:

I told them that they had better ...(to sow)...the land before winter comes.

I want to say "sowed" here but i'm not sure it's the correct form.

Thank you!
 

5jj

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Oct 14, 2010
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English Teacher
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British English
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Czech Republic
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hello everybody,
i have a problem with the use of "had better".
i found nothing on the subject in the grammar books i read in terms of what comes after "had better". like in this sentence:

I told them that they had better ...(to sow)...the land before winter comes.

I want to say "sowed" here but i'm not sure it's the correct form.

Thank you!

They had better sow. bare infinitive
It would be better to sow. to- infinitive,
It would be better if they sowed.
past tense in 2nd conditional sentence.


p.s. please use normal conventions as far as you can on this language forum - e.g. for the personal pronoun, use a capital letter for I. :)
 
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