Might can be right
‘May’ and ‘might’ can give a bit of trouble over when to use each one, but it is worth sorting out because there is a valuable distinction to be made, says HUMPHREY EVANS
YOU CAN say “This might interest you”. You can say “This may interest you”. You can say “Might this interest you?” But you can’t say “May this interest you?”
In the same way you can say “May the force be with you” but you can’t say “Might the force be with you”, unless you turn it into a question.
What these show is that there are differences between may and might, difficult though they are to pin down, and that the two are not as totally interchangeable as some people appear to believe.
One difference is to do with levels of probability. Something that may happen is a lot more likely to occur than something that might happen.
But the real killer app, to borrow some computer jargon, comes when you use might, not may, to refer to a conditional hypothesis: “Captain Scott might have reached the South Pole first — and survived the trip — if he had used dogs to pull the sleighs.” You could not say “may have” because we know he did not.
So that is a really useful distinction to be able to make, to indicate to readers that you are speculating about what might have been, rather than what actually was. Yet, for some people, might is apparently dropping out, leaving just may and, thereby, losing this distinction.
Here are some examples that have made it into print:
“Some of the Dutch still believe that if Johan Cruyff had played in the 1978 World Cup finals, Holland may have come home with the trophy.”
“More than one rapist has said to his victim, without any irony, ‘you should be more careful because someone nasty may have attacked you’ ” — though in this case the grammatical dubiety does rather pale in comparison to the monstrosity of the concept.
“If it had not been for the submarine crew’s outstanding efforts, the consequences may have been much worse.”
All of these make my nerve ends jangle. I’d like to be able to ring the writers up to ask them what meaning they thought they were conveying with their “mays”. If I were subbing the pieces, I’d be turn them into “mights”.
But what if I am watching the language change in front of my eyes? Might may be the future — or may might yet prevail?