Example sentences of "[modal v] have [been] [art] [adj] " in BNC.

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1 There must 've been a little bit of snow
2 " Funny , I did n't think I 'd hit him , but I suppose I must have — must 've been the second shot .
3 However , whereas it should have been a joyous occasion , it was not .
4 The opportunity should have been a real opportunity of doing something effective .
5 The two tall oblongs of light from the first-floor drawing-room window should have been a welcoming promise of warmth and comfort .
6 IT SHOULD have been a good week .
7 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 .
8 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 .
9 Twice , in less than four days , what should have been a simple operation had turned bad .
10 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 .
11 There should have been a better backcloth , something that smacked more of the dramatic and less of the bare ordinariness of these humble homes .
12 Home I went for the Christmas vac with the ragged tatters of what should have been a well-moulded start to a brilliant career !
13 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 .
14 Even allowing for what they would have lost on laundering the proceeds , there should have been a tidy sum .
15 The Sun decisively sabotaged what should have been a major circulation booster for its main competitor .
16 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 .
17 Hugh Kenner veers unexpectedly into the idiom of the British schoolboy : ‘ Blast should have been a great lark ’ .
18 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 .
19 What should have been a great event was diminished .
20 The visit should have been a great success for both the tall and the short mavericks of the respective alliances .
21 IT SHOULD have been a great year for Julie Walters .
22 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 .
23 There should have been a second woman here to receive her honourary degree — Aung San Suu Kyi — founder of the fledgling Burmese democracy movement .
24 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 .
25 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 …
26 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 .
27 ENGLAND manager Geoff Cooke , horrified by violence that marred what should have been a gentle centenary celebration , read the riot act to the players after England 's new kids on the block found themselves on the rack at Leicester .
28 The game should have been a classic but clearly was n't .
29 Two seconds , one of which should have been a first .
30 Midge protested at what she saw as bureaucratic interference in what should have been a private grief .
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