User blog comment:Luvdwayulie/IMPORTANT: Grammar Fix + Difficulty Name Issues/@comment-3225604-20140311123553/@comment-4189499-20140313104810

Wait, you're waiting for my opinion on the use of language? Don't tell any of my former English teachers; they might die of disbelief!

On a more serious note, I do believe the word "if" is the better word to use in this case. As has been stated above, "when" suggests with a level of certainty that something will happen. As in, will happen each time. "If" is used when something might not happen at least some of the time. However, "when" isn't really wrong exactly, if you were going to get technical. It still puts across the idea of a correlation between something happening which results in something else happening, however it is much less clear that the event isn't a certainty because of the words connotations, or at least not in this case.

Let's examine a sentence to see how its meaning changes between the two words. This is taken from point 1 above in the blog post.
 * 1) "If you have moves remaining after completing the level, Sugar Crush will be activated and for each remaining move, a random regular candy will be changed into a striped candy which will then be activated"
 * 2) "When you have moves remaining after completing the level, Sugar Crush will be activated and for each remaining move, a random regular candy will be changed into a striped candy which will then be activated"

The first sentence makes it very clear that having moves remaining when one finishes a level isn't necessarily going to happen, which we know is true from experience. The second does have a much stronger sense, or it connotates, that one will finish a level with moves remaining, even though by its denotation, or "dictionary definition", one might think it could allow a bit more wiggle room. In this case, I would say the word "when" is wrong because one might not finish with moves remaining, and "if" is a much better substitute as it allows for that possibility.

One may inevitably get a board which finishes with moves remaining, but that still doesn't mean that it is correct to use the word "when" to generalise all cases as we are doing in these articles, because there are some times when the board will be completed without moves remaining. Let me take an example of another statement: This statement was true on Tuesday, and it will again be true on Sunday, however it is not true today as I will be waking up at 6:00 tomorrow and as a result will take the 7:00 bus. The statement also won't be true on Friday, because I'm not planning on waking up at any time before 9:00 on Saturday morning! If I were to make the above statement more true, I would replace the word "when" with "if". See how its meaning changes: This statement is still true today, as if suggests the possibility for the condition to not be fulfilled. In this situation, I am neither waking up at 7:00 nor am I taking the 8:00 bus, but it was never said I was. It only says that if I were to wake up at 7:00 tomorrow, I would be taking the 8:00 bus, but since I'm not fulfilling the first condition of waking at 7:00, I don't need to fulfil the second condition of taking the 8:00 bus. When the statement said "when", it suggested a certainty that the first condition would always be met. Now it says "if", the certainty is gone, making the statement applicable to all days of the week.
 * "When I wake up tomorrow at 7:00, I will take the 8:00 bus."
 * "If I wake up tomorrow at 7:00, I will take the 8:00 bus."

I hope that was clear and that I didn't babble on too much. As I said earlier, analysing language isn't a strong point of mine, so I don't really know how to be more clear or succinct about it. If it's not clear enough, I'll have another shot at it tomorrow, but right now I need to get some sleep for a 6:00 start tomorrow! G'night!