 One ontological role for states of affairs and facts is to be the primary bearers of modality. Suppose that facts are obtaining states of affairs. Then we may distinguish the obtaining state of affairs that Sam is sad from the obtaining states of affairs that Sam is possibly sad, that Sam is probably sad, and that Sam ought to be sad. Here the modal properties qualify the property of being sad and so qualify Sam. They are de re modalities. And, so the view goes, the place of such modal properties is in states of affairs. (A state of affairs is, as the German terms “Sachverhalt”, “Sachverhältnis” suggest, a relation between things, the way things stand with respect to one another, “wie die Sachen sich zueinander verhalten”.) A further claim is that some de dicto modalities properly qualify states of affairs: the state of affairs that Sam is sad probably obtains/possibly obtains/ought to obtain. Suppose that a fact is just the exemplification of properties. Then we may distinguish the fact that Sam is a man and the fact that Sam is necessarily a man. But a friend of facts like the last one then has to accept that not all facts are formally simple.