Chapter We've all heard the term 'in a mood', but have you heard about 'grammatical mood'

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Grammatical Mood

So what exactly is grammatical mood?
Grammatical mood refers to the use of verb forms to show how the sentence should be understood (e.g. whether it is a fact, a wish, a question, a command, or a condition).
We can recognise grammatical mood by looking at the use of verbs and verb forms. These help to indicate the purpose of the sentence and how it should be perceived by the reader/listener.

Types and examples of grammatical mood

There are 5 main types of mood in the English language. These are:

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  Indicative- stating a fact or belief (e.g. Paris is the capital of France).
  
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  Imperative- making requests or commands (e.g. Don't sit there!)
  
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  Subjunctive- expressing a hypothetical situation, wish, possibility, suggestion (e.g. if I were rich, I'd buy a beach-side villa).
  
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  Interrogative- asking questions (e.g. Are you coming with us later?)
  
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  Conditional- state conditions and make requests (e.g. If I get this work done, can we go out for dinner?).
  

There are also other types of grammatical moods in English such as the 'optative' and the 'potential' moods which are less common. If we start looking at other languages, we'll find even more moods that have different uses and express different meanings.
Grammatical mood is different from other grammatical categories such as grammatical tense and grammatical aspect. Whilst all 3 give extra information in speech and writing, each category gives a different kind of information:

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  Grammatical mood shows how the sentence should be understood.
  
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  Grammatical tense shows whether an action happened in the past, present, or future.
  
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  Grammatical aspect shows whether the action is ongoing, repeated, or completed.