Example sentences of "[modal v] [verb] be a [adj] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | It is very true that in one sense it must be implied that although there is no existing difference , still that a difference may arise between the parties : yet I think the distinction between an existing difference and one which may arise is a material one , and one which has properly been relied on in this case … |
| 2 | When told by them that the sales of budgerigar seed were disastrous and the market might easily disappear within a few years , Mrs Franklin came back with what you may think was a simple answer — but it was profound in terms of changing British public opinion — she said , " Breed your own consumers . " |
| 3 | There must 've been a little bit of snow |
| 4 | In my respectful submission there could be A , no question that the jury would be discharged and B , in the submission er some er judicial displeasure of an experienced police officer volunteering what any police officer must know is A inadmissible and B not an answer to the question . |
| 5 | you may even and this is a bit I mean Saturday lunchtime is a bit I 'm almost almost er oh the producer 's going , Careful careful , which he should know is a red flag to a bull and I might say no but I wo n't . |
| 6 | It is now recognised that the costing of community-based care to take account of the wider back-up services on which it must depend is a complicated calculation which was not available with any degree of sophistication at the height of the movement away from institutional care ( Knapp , 1986 ) . |
| 7 | However , whereas it should have been a joyous occasion , it was not . |
| 8 | The opportunity should have been a real opportunity of doing something effective . |
| 9 | The two tall oblongs of light from the first-floor drawing-room window should have been a welcoming promise of warmth and comfort . |
| 10 | IT SHOULD have been a good week . |
| 11 | It should have been a simple matter to check , but the dosimeters for measuring radioactivity were locked in a safe and the panel in the control room was dead . |
| 12 | What should have been a simple review looked like it was about to turn into techno-confusion when the owner 's manual stated I could find a hook-up diagram on page 42 , and it was n't there . |
| 13 | Twice , in less than four days , what should have been a simple operation had turned bad . |
| 14 | But when I later tried to find my way back to the dining-room to finish my meal , which should have been a simple thing to do , I just could not locate it at all . |
| 15 | There should have been a better backcloth , something that smacked more of the dramatic and less of the bare ordinariness of these humble homes . |
| 16 | Home I went for the Christmas vac with the ragged tatters of what should have been a well-moulded start to a brilliant career ! |
| 17 | It should have been a new beginning , a clean slate but , as she rode out the following morning , her head clouded from lack of sleep , Kelly knew that life was never that easy . |
| 18 | Even allowing for what they would have lost on laundering the proceeds , there should have been a tidy sum . |
| 19 | The Sun decisively sabotaged what should have been a major circulation booster for its main competitor . |
| 20 | Given his abilities and his natural desire to go into space , it should have been a logical extension of his career to graduate from the Air Force into the Space Programme . |
| 21 | Hugh Kenner veers unexpectedly into the idiom of the British schoolboy : ‘ Blast should have been a great lark ’ . |
| 22 | It was a beautiful day with small cumulus clouds and about thirty miles visibility , and it should have been a great experience , but unfortunately I felt deadly sick all the way and could hardly bear to look out . |
| 23 | What should have been a great event was diminished . |
| 24 | The visit should have been a great success for both the tall and the short mavericks of the respective alliances . |
| 25 | IT SHOULD have been a great year for Julie Walters . |
| 26 | There should have been a nice young man on the Sunningdale marriage circuit , and then a nice house in Ascot , and probably a cottage in Devon , and two boys at a good preparatory school in Surrey . |
| 27 | There should have been a second woman here to receive her honourary degree — Aung San Suu Kyi — founder of the fledgling Burmese democracy movement . |
| 28 | I felt the most awful failure , and thought that perhaps if we could try again — since the thing was done , the point of no return passed — we might arrange things better , somehow recapture the basis of feeling we had had , which should have been a perfect foundation for a love-affair , but which we had somehow bungled and thrown away . |
| 29 | Gloucester never got themselves into gear and they made hard work of what should have been a straightforward game … in the second half they hammered away at Scottish … all but lived on their line but failed to get over it … |
| 30 | Day one in Delhi should have been a gentle , relaxed affair lounging around the hotel pool recovering from jetlag after a 5am arrival from London . |