1) the declarative mood, used for making statements and expressing opinions, e.g. “The garden is beautiful.” or “I don’t like science fiction.”;

2) the interrogative mood, used for asking questions, e.g. “Are you happy here?”;

3) the imperative mood, used for giving orders, e.g. “Go and see the headmaster.”; and

4) the subjunctive mood, used to express hopes, wishes, suggestions, recommendations, and what is imagined rather than what really exists.

A verb in the subjunctive mood doesn’t have to agree with the subject of the clause it is in. The present subjunctive always takes the base form of the verb, no matter what the tense of the first verb is. Here are some examples:

a) “He suggested that I apply for another scholarship.”

Here, the subordinate clause beginning with “that” uses the base form of the verb “apply” even though the first verb is in the past tense, i.e. “suggested”.

b) “The committee recommends that she be promoted at once to a higher grade.”

Here, the “that-” clause also uses the base form of the verb “be” instead of “is”, which one would normally use after “she”.

c) “God save the King!” expresses best wishes for the King and means “May God save the King!”.

Here, the base form of the verb “save” is used instead of “saves” which agrees with “God”.

In expressing an unlikely possibility, the past subjunctive is used, in which a past tense verb is used to express what is imagined or wished, and also unlikely possibilities. Here are some examples:

d) “If they made me a king, I’d still be a slave to you.”

This is a line from an old song, where the past subjunctive also corresponds to the second conditional.

e) “Imagine that you had won a lottery.”

f) “This hungry orphan in Africa could be your child; so please help him.”

g) “If I were a millionaire ...” Here the plural form “were” is used instead of “was” which we would normally use with “I”. This unusual usage is only confined to the “be” verb.

We don’t use “one” or “a” before “half”, and “of” is also unnecessary. But if you are talking about “quarter”, then you need both “a”/”one” and “of” as in “Ali gave a quarter of his cake to Aliah.”

3) - 6) These involve the use of decimals below 1 before nouns. Usually, a singular noun is used only after the number 1. Plural nouns are used after 0 and decimals below 1. Here are some examples from reputable sites on the Internet:

a) There is a lot of food on the table.

b) The children are enjoying the food.

You shouldn’t write “enjoy” in the past tense in sentence b) if you use the present tense “is” in sentence a).

2) The usual word order would be “Mother said”. But at the end of a quotation, you can use either “said Mother” or “Mother said”.

3) “John looked at the variety of bread.” is the correct sentence.

“Variety” is used in the singular when it is a collective noun that means a varied collection of something. The word is usually preceded by “a” or “the”. Here is an Internet example of its use:

“Varieties” is used after plural determiners like “many” or “different”, as in “many varieties of bread” or “different varieties of bread”, or when particular kinds are specified, as in “traditional varieties of bread”.

4) The correct sentence is “Sam dared not go out with his friends yesterday.”

6) It should be “Pay at the counter.”, with “counter” here meaning the cashier’s counter.

7) “He always goes jogging” means he still goes jogging regularly. But “He always went jogging” means that he does not go jogging any more, but used to do so regularly in the past.

8) As far as using “the” before a place name is concerned, there is no difference between a real place and a fictional place.

Some real palaces have “the” before their names, e.g. “The Crystal Palace” (a building after which the football team was named), and some don’t have “the”, as in “Buckingham Palace” and “Blenheim Palace”.