Tense confusion

In grammar, a tense confusion occurs when a writer shifts from the present tense to the past tense (or vice versa).[1][2] For example, in the following example, the change from "saw" (past tense) to "is" (present tense) represents a tense confusion:

Example:

He saw that she is very tall.

It is important to avoid tense confusions because they hurt reader comprehension.[3][4] They are a common grammatical error,[5] especially among beginning writers.[6]

References

  1. ↑ "Verb Tenses ~ Correcting Shifts" (PDF). The Quality Writing Center. Retrieved 28 January 2013.
  2. ↑ "Tense Consistency".
  3. ↑ "Verb Tense Consistency". Retrieved 2013-01-28.
  4. ↑ Verb Tense Consistency. Grammerly Handbook. Grammerly.
  5. ↑ "Verb Tense Consistency". CLA Department of English. Retrieved 28 January 2013.
  6. ↑ Mencher, Melvin. "Grammar Exercise 11: Verb Tense Consistency". McGraw Hill. Retrieved 28 January 2013.


This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 1/2/2014. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.