Most difficulties with verb tenses arise either (1) from a failure to maintain consistency of verb tense throughout a passage of writing, or (2) from the need to observe a convention called the historical present (or "literary present"). The historical present is used to narrate an action that continues to happen or always happens, even if some narrator has narrated the action in the past tense. When Agamemnon and Akhilleus quarrel in Book I of the Iliad, the poet narrates actions in the past tense:
But now the son of Pleus turned on Agammnon and lashed out at him, letting his anger ride in execration....
A student writing about this passage, however, would use the historical present:
In describing the wrath of Akhilleus, Homer begins with a metaphor of aggression ("lashed out") but passes quickly to an image expressing how the hero blends passivity and subtle control ("letting his anger ride").
Here the historical present is used both for the character's actions within the poem (since Akhilleus will be doing the same thing the next time you read the passage) and for the poet's actions in writing the poem (since the passage will always begin one way and continue in another way). The latter usage, which seems to refer to a person who once lived, is actually just a conventional way of describing the workings of a text. In other contexts where the intention is to refer to the historical person who wrote a text, the past tense is appropriate. Compare:
Shakespeare probably wrote Macbeth in 1605.
Shakespeare writes with unprecedented economy in Macbeth.
The historical present should be used for actions that occur in anything that can be considered a cultural text: books, poems, plays, movies, and so on.
Other verb tense problems may arise from complexities in the sequence of tenses. Observe the following examples:| Past | the act completed | He walked to school. |
| Past Progressive | the act in progress in the past | He was walking to school. |
| Present Perfect | the act begun in the past and continuing into the present | He has walked to school since he was eight. |
| Present Perfect Progressive | the act begun in the past and still in progress in the present | He has been walking to school every morning. |
| Past Perfect | the act completed before another event that occurred in the past | He had walked before he spoke his first word. |
| Past Perfect Progressive | the act begun and occurring in the past before another event | He had been walking the day before he celebrated his first birthday. |
In sentences with multiple clauses, the sequence of tenses helps specify an exact temporal relation between two or more actions:
| Inexact | The meeting was a success because it has been planned carefully. |
| Exact | The meeting was a success because they had planned it well. |
(Examples of tense sequence are reproduced from Gerald Levin, The Macmillan College Handbook [New York: Macmillan, 1987] 387.)
See also Purdue handout and exercise on tense consistency.
Copyright 1996 Yale University. Revised on Monday, May 20, 1996