When this column took up the grammar of "if"-conditional sentences last week, I emphasized that a good communicator doesn't make bland assertions of truth every time but expresses them simply as factual knowledge or hypothetical situations and consequences of prediction, speculation, or plain guesswork. What this means is that our credibility depends on clearly indicating whether the assertion we make is a certainty (a zero conditional), a real possibility (a first conditional), an unreal possibility (as second conditional), or isn't a possibility at all (a third conditional).
After distinguishing these four types of "if"-conditionals from one another, however, I gave word of advice that a good communicator avoids overusing them whether in written and spoken form. Indeed, unless you're composing impassioned verse like Rudyard Kipling's in his famous and widely anthologized 32-line poem "If —," such conditionals should be used only sparingly and not as expositional straitjackets that could alienate or turn off the reader or listener. (Click this link for Kipling's "If—." https://poets.org/poem/if.)
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