Zero Conditionals are one of the five types of conditional sentence in English. They are used to talk about things that are always true. You use this pattern when the result of a condition or situation is 100% sure. They can talk about laws of science, facts and something that always happens.

How to make a zero conditional

Zero conditionals are made like this:

Look at some examples:

Thinking deeper about it

Logically, this pattern makes perfect sense. Having a present verb in the two halves of the sentence means that the actions happen at the same time. When you look at the other conditional patterns, the verbs are different in each half of the sentence. That is because one action happens after the other.

Check for Zero Conditionals

With Zero Conditionals, you can swap "if" for "when" or "whenever" and the sentence will still make sense. Please try it with the examples above. This is because the result happens every time. First conditionals are different: they talk about something that will happen only once; they talk about once specific case or event.