8.80 making comparisons

You can also use these expressions to compare the way something is done with the way someone or something else does it.

• Surely you don't intend to live by yourself like she does?
• Joyce looked at her the way a lot of girls did.

If you want to make a strong comparison, you use 'just as'.

• It swims above the sea floor just as its ancestors did.

If you want to make a fairly weak comparison, you use 'much as'.

• They are endeavouring to disguise this fact much as Jasper Johns did in the late 1950s.

8.81

You sometimes want to say that something is done in the way that it would be done if something were the case. You do this by using 'as if' or 'as though'. You use a past tense in the clause of manner.

• He holds his head forward as if he has hit it too often on low doorways.
• Presidents can't dispose of companies as if people didn't exist.
• She treats him as though he was her own son.
• He behaved as though it was nothing to be ashamed of.

You also use 'as if' or 'as though' after link verbs such as 'feel' or 'look'. You do this when you are comparing someone's feelings or appearance to the feelings or appearance they would have if something were the case.

• She felt as if she had a fever.
• His hair looked as if it had been combed with his fingers.
• Her pink dress and her frilly umbrella made her look as though she had come to a garden party.

In formal English, 'were' can be used instead of 'was' in clauses beginning with 'as if' or 'as though'.

• She shook as if she were crying, but she made no sound.
• I felt as if I were the centre of the universe.
• You talk as though he were already condemned.

You can use 'just' in front of 'as if' or 'as though' for emphasis.

• He had no right to run off and leave her alone, just as if she was someone of no importance at all.

8.82

You can also use 'as if' and 'as though' in non-finiteclauses. The clause begins with a 'to'-infinitive or a participle.

• As if to remind him, the church clock struck eleven.
• He ran off to the house as if escaping.
• He shook his head as though dazzled by his own vision.

You can also use 'as if' and 'as though' in front of adjectives and prepositional phrases.

• One must row steadily onwards as if intent on one's own business.
• He shivered as though with cold.