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Ravikumarkargam Posted 18 years ago
Grammar

Present tense usage to explain the past

Hi,

Please find below the mail sent by my american colleague about the mistake he had done in the presentation.

The mistake I made was in thinking that pi was automatically defined by Perl. It’s not. So, what was happening was the undefined pi symbol was being given the value of 0, and that’s what was being passed into cos. 


The question I have is about the highlighted red colored text "It's not". I think it means "It is not". But the situation is about past.

Is it correct to use present tense. Why not "It was not".

Please clarify.

Thanks,

Ravi
  

Top answer

Because the statement holds true in the present. Pi is still not defined by Perl as we speak.

— Mister Micawber

  • Because the statement holds true in the present.
  • Pi is still not defined by Perl as we speak.
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3 Answers
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Because the statement holds true in the present. Pi is still not defined by Perl as we speak.
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It is an independent fact, and not something that occured as part of the event being described in the past.
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ravikumarkargamIt’s not.
It's (It is) a general statement about the way Perl works -- always. It's not a statement about how Perl worked on some particular occasion. There's absolutely no hope that if you ran the program in the future, pi would be defined by Perl. That is not the way Perl
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