Indicative Mood — Mood & Modality
What Is It?
The indicative mood states facts or asks real-world questions.
Canonical pattern: Subject → Verb Phrase.
Why Use Indicative Mood?
- Clarity – tells readers exactly what the system does.
- Factuality – documents real behaviour ("The job runs at 02:00").
- Versatility – works with any tense, voice, or aspect.
- Traceability – mirrors logs and monitoring data for audits.
When to Choose Indicative Mood
- Incident reports and post-mortems.
- Release notes describing changes.
- Knowledge-base answers and FAQs.
- Automated alerts that state current status.
Forming Indicative Sentences
| Tense / Aspect | Formula (bold = clause core) | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Present Simple | S + V (+ O) | The service restarts every hour. |
| Past Simple | S + V-ed (+ O) | The script failed at 14:07. |
| Future Continuous | S + will be + V-ing | The cluster will be scaling during peak. |
| Present Perfect | S + have/has + V-pp | Users have reported latency spikes. |
Tips for Writing with Indicative Mood
- State verifiable facts; avoid speculation.
- Keep tense consistent within sections.
- Use active voice for energy ("QA tests detect issues").
- Pair metrics with verbs ("CPU peaks at 90 %").
- Drop needless fillers ("It is important to note that…").
Exceptions & Nuances
Rhetorical questions still sit in indicative mood (“Why does the daemon stop?”) but add engagement. Negative statements may need emphasis (“The cache does not purge automatically”).