were or was. again. :/

I think it goes like this:

He was (singular)

They were (plural)

Therefore your sentence should be:

If he wasn't so tired, he would have laughed.

Richard

There's an explanation here from Grammar Girl covering subjunctive verbs you might find helpful.

I like her a lot. She's quick and dirty AND sexy.

Seaclusion said:

I think it goes like this:

He was (singular)

They were (plural)

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I think that James is wondering if he needs to use the conditional mood here, not wondering about subject/verb agreement in the simple past.


"He was a rich man until he lost all his money" = simple past

"If he were a rich man again, he'd buy a big house" = conditional mood, uses subjunctive form of verb


I actually think that sentence would be best rewritten as "If he hadn't been so tired, he would have laughed" or better yet "He would have laughed if he hadn't been so tired."

Better yet, take the opportunity to show your reader tired the character is:

"Physically drained, he couldn't muster enough energy to laugh"

Now that's tired!

It's "weren't."

The fact that it's a "condition contrary to fact" makes it subjunctive. http://www.grammarsnobs.com/subjunctive

I love Grammar Girl, too. Add "nice" to that list.

JamesAllen said:

If he wasn't so tired, he would have laughed.
If he weren't so tired, he would have laughed.

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Ditto on the reference to the subjunctive thread; your first sentence is incorrect because it needs to be subjunctive ("were"). But there's also a problem of tense agreement here (I don't mean agreements that are stressful, haha.) Example of two correct sentences:

A (describing something that's true now): If I weren't so tired, I would laugh. (As in, if I weren't so tired right now, I would laugh.)
B (describing something that was true at some moment in the past): If I hadn't been so tired, I would have laughed. (As in, if I hadn't been so tired yesterday when you made that joke, I would have laughed.)

Those are correct. But your second sentence mixes and matches them--you start with a present moment and finish in the past. Can't have it both ways--when is this happening, now or in the past?