🕰️ Grammar B2-3: used to vs would

The third material of the Fleydo B2 grammar series takes a pair most learners meet as interchangeable and separates them along one hard line: would repeats actions only, while used to carries actions and states alike. He used to own a hundred clocks is the only possible sentence; he would own a hundred clocks is not a stylistic slip but a broken one, and it is the error that gives an ambitious writer away. A camera test replaces the usual list of state verbs — if you can film the verb happening, both forms are open; if you can only describe how things stood, used to is the only door — and a note shows the same verb crossing that line, from used to have a motorbike to would have a haircut every Friday. The second half of the lesson is about register. would borrows its past tense from the sentence in front of it, so a frameless I would live in a small flat slides into the conditional and leaves the reader hunting for an if. The memoir architecture is taught explicitly as a shape: open with used to to plant the frame, continue with would for the habits inside it, and keep every state on used to however deep the paragraph runs. A full form table covers the spoken contraction he’d, the -d that disappears after did, and the reason negatives and questions desert would altogether, since wouldn’t is heard as refusal and Would you…? as a request. Thirty-one explained multiple-choice items across four sets, ten action-or-state chips to sort, six commit-first reveal cards, six repairs and four traps drill it, and a 134-word memoir paragraph about a watch-repair workshop under the stairs shows every choice working in connected prose.