Example sentences of "should not [verb] [be] [adj] " in BNC.

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1 The one thing you should not do is waste money and risk your fish 's health by treating the tank with chemicals — there is no point unless you know what you are treating .
2 In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy , there was no reason why Connelly should not have been helpful or why Jones should have falsified an entry in his notebook . )
3 The Government should have made a statement on the way in which the police national computer operates ; it should not have been necessary for me or the National Council for Civil Liberties to prise information from them .
4 Had not the echo of my prayer been upon me still , I should not have been ready .
5 If I had had qualifications I should not have been able to use them legally , and I should have been too hoity-toity to take on the sort of me-nial , unregulated work available .
6 Had someone insisted he had seen me in Romorantin , or further afield , I should not have been able to confirm or deny the sighting .
7 Over such a period , as has already been apparent with Polaris , if we had only had three , we should not have been able to maintain that programme .
8 The wife and the bachelor in the above cases should have been entitled to insist that the confusion be cleared up by a published clarification , but they should not have been able to obtain an award of damages against a newspaper which was not at fault .
9 The whole of tonight 's entertainment looked to me unreal , something like a banqueting scene of an opera , and I should not have been surprised to find the capon under my knife to consist of cardboard and my ‘ goblet of sparkling wine ’ full of emptiness with a rim of cotton wool to represent the foam of the champagne that was not there .
10 When I asked what her name was , I should not have been surprised when she replied clearly : ‘ My name is Lydia . ’
11 It has been suggested that Penda 's political power was in eclipse at the time and that Eowa was the dominant ruler among the Mercians as a subject king of the northern Angles from the mid-630s until his death , possibly in Oswald 's army , in the battle at Maserfelth , but there is no reason why Penda and Eowa should not have been ruling jointly , with Eowa as king possibly of the northern Mercians and Penda as king of the southern .
12 He should not have been ashamed of his grandfather , of course , but his upbringing had been pitiful , constantly on the march from one to another of a whole series of ‘ uncles ’ — there were several between his father and the solicitor — so that he had nothing stable in his life at all .
13 I should n't have been content to be just a wife . ’
14 Macbeth should n't have been indecisive about the murder .
15 Morrissey was deeply upset by the ‘ Suffer Little Children ’ episode , but he should n't have been surprised .
16 I was so stunned you 'd managed to pull off such a coup — but I should n't have been surprised , remembering how you built up the company from nothing . ’
17 There were date palms in the middle ground and I should n't have been surprised to see a pyramid in the distance .
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