Imperative mood
The imperative mood is the verb form used to give a command, an instruction or a request, with the subject 'you' understood rather than stated: 'shut the door', 'hold the line'.
Shut the door. No subject appears, because the subject is whoever is being addressed. That absence is what makes the imperative the shortest complete sentence English offers, and the most direct.
Mood is what a verb form says about the status of an action. The indicative states something (the door is shut), the subjunctive marks it as wished for or unreal (if the door were shut), and the imperative tells someone to make it happen.
How the imperative is formed
Use the plain form of the verb, with no ending: go, wait, listen, be careful.
- Negative: add do not or don't. Don't shut the door.
- Softened: Please shut the door. Shut the door, would you?
- Emphatic: Do shut the door.
- Including the speaker: let's or let us. Let's go. Let us not pretend.
- With a stated subject, for emphasis or contrast: You stay here. Somebody call an ambulance.
An imperative does not need an exclamation mark. Sit down. with a full stop is calm; Sit down! is shouted. The punctuation is a delivery note, so choose it on purpose.
Examples of the imperative in writing
Instructions. Recipes, manuals and how-to writing run almost entirely on imperatives: Preheat the oven. Grease the tin. The reader is removed from the sentence and only the action is left.
Second-person narration. A story told in the imperative (Take the second turning. Do not look at the house.) creates an unusual closeness and an unusual unease, since the reader is being told what they are doing. Lorrie Moore's collection Self-Help borrows the form of the how-to guide for exactly this effect.
Rhetoric. The imperative is the natural close of a persuasive passage, and it stacks well with anaphora: Read it again. Read it slowly. Read it to the end. It is also a common form for apostrophe, the figure of speaking to someone or something absent. Lear on the heath shouts at the storm: Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!
The imperative in dialogue
A run of bare imperatives reads as authority, panic or contempt, and which one depends on what the scene has already established.
"Get in. Keep your head down. Don't talk."
The same three lines could come from a rescuer or a kidnapper. The words do not decide it; the scene around them does. Short imperatives also speed up a scene, because there is almost nothing in them except the verb, which makes them useful in action and dangerous over a long conversation.
The softened forms are characterisation too. A character who says Would you mind closing the door? and one who says Shut it are telling us different things about themselves and about who they think is in charge.
Frequently asked questions
What is the imperative mood?
The imperative mood is the form a verb takes when it gives a command, an instruction, a warning or a request, such as 'sit down' or 'turn left at the church'. It uses the plain form of the verb, and the person being addressed is understood rather than named.
Does an imperative sentence have a subject?
Usually not on the page. The subject is 'you', understood. It can be stated for emphasis or contrast, as in 'You stay here, I'll go', and a few imperatives name a group instead: 'Nobody move.'
What is the difference between the imperative and the subjunctive mood?
The imperative gives an order directly: 'Leave.' The subjunctive reports a demand or describes something unreal: 'She demanded that he leave.' Both can use the plain form of the verb, which is why they look alike.