Third Conditional: no possibility

The first conditional and second conditionals talk about the future. With the third conditional we talk about the past. We talk about a condition in the past that did not happen. That is why there is no possibility for this condition. The third conditional is also like a dream, but with no possibility of the dream coming true.

Last week you bought a lottery ticket. But you did not win. :-(

	condition	result
	Past Perfect	WOULD HAVE + Past Participle
If	I had won the lottery	I would have bought a car.

Notice that we are thinking about an impossible past condition. You did not win the lottery. So the condition was not true, and that particular condition can never be true because it is finished. We use the past perfect tense to talk about the impossible past condition. We use WOULD HAVE + past participle to talk about the impossible past result. The important thing about the third conditional is that both the condition and result are impossible now.

Sometimes, we use should have, could have, might have instead of would have, for example: If you had bought a lottery ticket, you might have won.

Look at some more examples in the tables below:

IF	condition	result
	past perfect	WOULD HAVE + past participle
If	I had seen Mary	I would have told her.
If	Tara had been free yesterday	I would have invited her.
If	they had not passed their exam	their teacher would have been sad.
If	it had rained yesterday	would you have stayed at home?
If	it had rained yesterday	what would you have done?

result	IF	condition
WOULD HAVE + past participle		past perfect
I would have told Mary	if	I had seen her.
I would have invited Tara	if	she had been free yesterday.
Their teacher would have been sad	if	they had not passed their exam.
Would you have stayed at home	if	it had rained yesterday?
What would you have done	if	it had rained yesterday?