Advanced Verb Tenses
For Important and Good-Looking Writers With Places to Be
Nobody has time to learn about verb tenses. I mean, we did have time to learn about verb tenses—when we were in high school. Or elementary school if you were in a better school system than me. I don’t know about anybody else but I was way busier in high school than I am now.
In high school, I attended an arts magnet program so I had ten periods a day (one period was lunch) while non–arts magnet students had the usual eight. My first bell rang at 7:50 AM. My last bell let me out at 4:10 PM. Then I went to my part-time job several nights a week till 9:00 PM. Somewhere in there I also had to eat, sleep, do homework, and go out on dates. My parents used to tell me I might think I was under stress but that I wouldn’t understand real stress till I was an adult and had a job job—a real job. Now I have a real job and it has no homework, my working hours are shorter than my high school hours, I don’t have another part-time job on top of it, and fortunately I don’t have to date high school kids anymore, either.
We are not giving the high school students enough credit.
So anyway this is why I would like to be excused from having learned anything in high school. The school bus picked me up at 6:10 in the morning and I didn’t get home till after 9:00 in the evening a lot of days. I was a walking corpse for most of high school. I don’t remember anything. Okay: I remember something about the pythagorean theorem but nothing beyond that.
When I was in college things were much better because although there was still homework as well as a full-time job on top of going to school, at least I only went to school for a few hours a day three days a week instead of forty full hours each week. This gave my brain breathing room to absorb a few things like advanced grammar and linguistics, which, thank goodness, because those are the things I use in my actual career.
I’ve written before in Shelf Life about narrative tense (see Tense Situation), meaning the tense in which an author writes their story: past and literary past (“she went to the graveyard”), present (“she goes to the graveyard”), and the rarely used future tense (“she will go to the graveyard”). I don’t think I know any stories written entirely in future tense, but it’s used often in literary past– and present-tense narratives to describe something that hasn’t yet happened (eg, “She would go to the store on Thursday.”)
When you’re writing a narrative, you have to think about your narrative tense. But when you’re writing anything, you employ more grammatical tenses than just past, present, and future. This is the part of language where you use all the crazy stuff like past pluperfect. I’m going to talk about these today as a companion to “Tense Situation” in solidarity with all those who slept through four straight years of high school English.
I’m going to focus on grammatical tense in English, because English is the language of Shelf Life and the only language I speak. More specifically, the bog-standard American English that is my mother tongue because I am not skilled in any of the other dialects of English.
Not all dialects of English have the same grammatical tenses. For instance, African American Vernacular English (AAVE) has several phases of past tense that standard American English does not have, including the recent, pre-recent, pre-present, and past inceptive. In standard English we may say “He finished working” to mean “His period of work has ended [at some point] in the past” but the verb—finished—does not itself express when in the past this occurred. In AAVE one might say “He done finished working” to mean my period of work has just ended versus “He been done working” to express that the period of work ended some time ago.
African American Vernacular English is more complex and more descriptive than standard American English, something speakers of standard American English ought to keep in mind.
Anyway, verb tense is how we change verbs in speech and writing to imply a reference of time—to color our language with when things happened or will happen. Tense is only one way we change verbs depending upon what we are saying. Verbs also have qualities like mood (for instance, the conditional mood), voice (active and passive), and, in some languages, gender.
Look at the verb look and how it can change in all these different ways.
First and second person: I, you, we, they look at the clock.
Third person: He, she, it looks at the clock.
Present tense: I am looking at the clock.
Habitual: I look at the clock regularly.
Past tense: I looked at the clock earlier.
Future tense: I will look at the clock tomorrow.
Past conditional: I may have looked at the clock yesterday.
Imperative: Look at the clock.
The simplest way to think about verb tense is that there are three time periods:
Past
Present
Future
And four aspects that modify those three time periods:
Simple
Perfect
Continuous
Perfect Continuous
Continuous is also known as progressive, depending on when and where you went to school. You can combine almost any of the time periods with any of the aspects to come up with a total of twelve verb tenses that express different things.
Simple
The simple past tense is an expression of something that happened in the past:
He went to the store.
When did he go to the store? Yesterday. Last year. In January. Doesn’t matter, happened in the past. Simple past can also be used for a series of actions:
He went to the store, bought groceries, and then cooked dinner.
Went, bought, and cooked are all expressed in the simple past tense. Regular verbs get an -ed added on the end. Irregular verbs—who knows.
Simple present tense is similar; it expresses an event that is happening right now in the present or something that habitually happens at the present time.
Maxine is sleepy.
I write Shelf Life on Monday and Wednesday nights.
We don’t want any, thanks.
Those are all things happening in the present, or habitually happening in the present, and the verb forms are all in the present tense—is, want, and write.
Finally, the simple future expresses something that hasn’t happened yet. The auxiliary verb will is usually used for this purpose.
We will go to the store tomorrow.
I will walk the dogs at 3 o’clock.
Work won’t begin until the boss gets here.
Perfect
The perfect tense is used to express an action that is completed—something that is done and is no longer in progress. In spite of the fact that it expresses something finished, there’s still a future perfect tense for things that will be completed in the future.
The past perfect tense is used for actions that were completed in the past before another action took place—that’s what separates past perfect from past simple. The auxiliary verb had is often used for this tense.
Had the movie already started when you arrived?
I had eaten already, so I wasn’t hungry at dinner time.
Donna skipped class because she hadn’t done her homework.
Present perfect is used for past actions that continue into the present time or have an effect on the present time. The auxiliary verbs have and has are usually clues that you’re using the present perfect tense.
Has the movie started yet?
I have eaten already, so I’m not hungry now.
Donna is skipping class because she hasn’t done her homework.
Future perfect is used to express an event or action that is expected to happen at a reference point in the future. The auxiliary verb phrase will have is often a signifier of the future perfect tense.
The movie will have started by the time we arrive.
I will have eaten already, so don’t wait on me.
Donna will not have finished her homework before class, so she’s planning to skip.
Continuous
The continuous tense is used to describe an action that was, is, or will be underway at a specific point in time—that is, something continuing during and potentially after a reference point.
As such, the past continuous tense describes something that was ongoing in the past, for instance:
I was writing Shelf Life all night.
The dogs were quiet until the doorbell rang.
Bryan was always picked last for kickball.
Poor Bryan.
Likewise, the present continuous tense describes something that is continuous and ongoing in the present. It may also describe something that happens frequently or habitually, even if it isn’t happening right this second.
I am writing Shelf Life all the time it feels like.
The dogs are quiet unless the doorbell rings.
Bryan is always picked last for kickball.
Won’t someone give Bryan a break?
The future continuous, finally, describes an action that will be ongoing, but in the future. Future continuous tends to use the auxiliary verb will plus the present participle.
I will be writing Shelf Life on Wednesday night.
The dogs will be quiet unless someone rings the doorbell.
Bryan will be picked last for kickball tomorrow, as usual.
One day Bryan will show you all.
Perfect Continuous
Okay here’s where it gets a little weird. The perfect continuous tense describes something finished (perfect tense) but still ongoing in either the past, present, or future. So, for instance, the past continuous describes something that began in the past and then was ongoing.
While you were partying, I was studying the blade.
The partying and the studying both began in the past but they didn’t simply happen; they were ongoing activities.
The present perfect continuous describes something that started in the past and continues into the present. Where the past perfect tends to use has and have, past perfect continuous is more likely to use has been or have been—
I have been publishing Shelf Life for several years now.
Janet has been working on the wedding plan for weeks.
We’ve been looking all over for you!
And then the weirdest one of all: The future perfect continuous. Something that is finished, but also continuing, sometime in the future.
Catherine will have been working as an editor for twenty years this March.
When I complete today’s Shelf Life, I will have written umpteen essays in total.
They will have been working on the wedding plan for six months by the time they get hitched.
The neat thing about all these verb tenses is you probably use all of them in a given day without even thinking about it. When you are writing, you probably never have to stop and think about which verb tense to use to express something. Unless you do stop and think about it, and then words suddenly lose all meaning, and you are sitting in front of your keyboard like “Words? No, I don’t know any words. I don’t know a single word. I have never written a word in my life.” But now, if that happens, you have a handy reference for when you need to express that your main character started training when he first became a werewolf and continues training to this very day.
Something everyone needs to express from time to time.
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