Rosemary Cole's Blog: The Sweet Torture of Writing - Posts Tagged "tenses"

I see misuse and abuse of the English language every day, and every time, I cringe. Just as when you see an animal being abused, you want to run up and rescue the poor bit of language, fix it up and make it healthy again. I wish we had a SPEL to report these abuses to - a Society for the Protection of the English Language!

The worst part is that it constantly threatens to become accepted - mangled, broken rules replacing the old ways. Okay, yes, language does have to be flexible to some degree and change over time with changes in usage. But do you really want to see the following misuses adopted into our beautiful language?

What I'm thinking of today is the way the tenses of SIMPLE PAST and PAST PERFECT have been getting horribly mixed up. I've seen it mostly in new authors' manuscripts and in independent authors' published (and poorly edited) books. Are you one of these? It's a NO-NO!

"The end-of-class bell rung." No! Past tense: should be RANG.

"She sung a hymn." Nope. Past tense: should be SANG. Or past perfect: She HAD SUNG.

I saw this next one often from doctors and other healthcare professionals, believe it or not, when I used to type medical and psychiatric reports:

"He had drank alcohol over the weekend."

Here we have horribly mixed tenses. If you want simple past, it should be: He drank alcohol. If you want past perfect, it should be: he HAD DRUNK alcohol.

He drinks
He drank
He had drunk

She sings
She sang
She had sung

The bell rings
The bell rang
The bell had rung

So as an author or writer, when should you use past vs past perfect? Authors constantly do this incorrectly, but as many fiction novels are written in the past tense, it's even more important to get it right.

Okay, the simple past is just that - simple. It's for things that happened before now.

Let's say that John is our main character. He's going to meet someone in town, fall in love and have an adventure or whatever.

"John woke late, got up and shuffled over to the refrigerator. He was feeling rough--just a hair of the dog was what he needed. But there was no beer left. He got in his car and drove into town to buy some more."

Okay, pretty clear so far. Except what if you want to talk about stuff that happened BEFORE John's past? All this stuff happening with John is happening in the past. So in a way, the past is John's "now." So if you want to refer to something that happened BEFORE John woke up, what tense do you use? If you use simple past, it could get mixed up with the "now" past, so to speak. The reader might get confused as to what happened when.

"John woke up late, got up and shuffled over to the refrigerator. He drank a lot of beer and was feeling rough--just a hair of the dog was what he needed. But there was no beer left. He got in his car and drove into town to buy some more."

Reading that, you're not sure if John drank beer in the morning when he got up, or was he referring to a previous episode?

This is when the past perfect comes in. It's for a past that happened BEFORE another past.

"John woke up late, got up and shuffled over to the refrigerator. He had drunk a lot of beer and was feeling rough--just a hair of the dog was what he needed. But there was no beer left. He got in his car and drove into town to buy some more."

See how that clarifies it? How about this one:

"John spotted Mary walking to town and pulled over to pick her up. They dated often but he wasn't sure how he felt about her."

With this wording, you're not sure if they had been dating at one time or were still dating now. Just slipping in the word "had" before "dated" places it firmly in the past before this one.

There are clue words that tell you when to use past perfect. These are words/phrases like: last week, last year, before, until now, previously, etc. In general, use past perfect for things that happened before the "current" past events.

"I walked to the library, then remembered I HAD left my books at home."

"Driving home, I passed my friend on the street and waved. That was odd - I HAD passed her on my way out, as well."

I hope this helps.

I'd love to hear any questions or comments!