I had walked this route before, but I still enjoyed the view. Now, let’s take a look at the same paragraph using the simple past, the past perfect, and the past continuous. I walked this route before, but I still enjoyed the view. Here’s a paragraph that only uses the simple past: It can also be unclear as to when events occurred. Otherwise, your writing will feel dull and repetitive. When choosing to use the past tense in your writing, you need a combination of past tenses.
Sensory description often uses the past continuous tense. It’s especially useful for describing a scene. When writing in the past tense, past perfect should be used frequently. The format is was/were + subject + present participle. For second-person singular and all plural subjects, use were.įor questions, the structure is similar to the past perfect tense. If your subject is first-person singular (I) or third-person singular (he, she, it, single noun), you will use was. All you really need to know is whether to use was or were. The present participle is the -ing form of the verb.
Instead, the structure is was/were + present participle. The present continuous tense is easier to construct than the past perfect because it doesn’t require a past participle. It makes the events that occurred clearer. The past continuous is important for setting the scene. It’s also used to explain what was happening when something else happened. It’s used to describe conditions that were repeated and actions that didn’t happen in one instant. The past continuous tense, also called the past progressive tense, refers to things that were ongoing in the past. If I had gone to sleep earlier last night, I would feel more rested today.You use conditional perfect to describe what the outcome would have been. In this instance, past perfect describes the condition. You can also use the past perfect when talking about conditional events. By using the past perfect, the second example clarifies that he went sometime further in the past.
The first example sounds like he went to Paris at that moment or sometime very recently. When you don’t use the past perfect tense, it can leave your readers unclear as to when events in your story are happening. To make the past participle negative, put not before the past participle. If you’re ever unsure what the past participle of a word is, you can find this in any dictionary under the present (standard) form of the verb. For example, the simple past tense form of go is went, but the past participle is gone. Some verbs have a completely different word for the past participle. To make things more confusing, sometimes British and American English use different past participles! Past participles might end in -ed, -d, -en, -n, or -t. Other times, the past participle is different. It is often the same as the simple past tense form of the verb. Sometimes, the past participle is easy to know. The past participle is the form of the verb that is used with perfect tenses, whether it’s past or present. In questions, the structure is had + subject + past participle. In declarative statements, the formula for writing the past perfect is had + past participle. In the second example, the present past implies that some event happened after I ate. This occurred before the event I’m talking about in the simple past. In the first example, we understand that I went to the post office before the store. Past Perfect: I had gone to the post office before. Simple Past: I went to the store yesterday. To refer to things that happened before, we use the past perfect tense. When we write in the past tense, the simple past tense is the moment in time we are describing. It refers to things that occurred before the point in time you are describing. An easy explanation for the past perfect is something happened before. The past perfect, or pluperfect, tense is used to talk about events that occurred in the past in relation to other events.
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