Grammatical Question

Which sentence is right?

"It's important that you don't bring a calculator"

OR

"It's important that you not bring a calculator"


Thanks in advance.

The first one sounds more natural to me.

I'm not sure about the second one but sounds incorrect...though I'm not a native speaker of English.

You can actually say it either way. Both are fine.

I think both are right.

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Dfens is wrong. The second is natural as well.

I'd say the first one. Just sounds more logical.

The first is the indicative, and asserts not only that the matter in question is important, but that it is the case (that is, it asserts that you indeed do not bring a calculator).

The second is the subjunctive, and asserts that you bringing a calculator is important, without making any assertions as to whether you bringing a calculator is the case.

>>The second is the subjunctive, and asserts that you bringing a calculator is important, without making any assertions as to whether you bringing a calculator is the case<<

I think you meant '...and asserts that you not bringing a calculator is important...'.

Yes, the use of 'not' instead of 'don't' in sentences like this indicates the subjunctive. If you said

'It is important that he not bring a calculator'

the subjunctive would be indicated by both the use of 'not' instead of 'don't' and the bare form of the verb 'bring' instead of 'brings'.

On the other hand some sentences don't show the subjunctive grammatically at all.

'It is important that you bring a calculator'

would be identical in both the indicative and subjunctive form.

But, you don't need to worry about it too much. Obviously as you can see above, the subjunctive in English is now very weak and incomplete, and many people, at least in BrE, use the indicative forms where strictly speaking the subjunctive is required. The Americans do adhere to it much more, but still I doubt you'd be misunderstood if you got it wrong there. And if you would, then so would many of us BrE speakers.