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Anonymous Posted 15 years ago
Grammar
Tense inconsistencies?
Hi. Please help. I think for most self-help books some writers, if not most, tell stories to bring in the points (whatever those might be) or some aspects of the writing he or she wants to accentuate (I hope what I said reflects what I wanted to say - not sure, though). Could the sentences below be correct in terms of tenses, particularly the underlined conditional sentence and the short sentence before it, "That is obvious."? If I am not mistaken, a third conditional sentence like "She would have bought it if she had had money" would be from the present-time perspective, and I am not sure how it would play out in a story-like setting where most of it is unfolded mainly in past tenses (and a few past continous tenses).
Things were getting tough and she didn't have what it took to go over the hump. That is obvious. She wouldn't have had her belongings packed up to leave if she felt there was hope for her here.
Things were getting tough and she didn't have what it took to go over the hump. That is obvious. She wouldn't have had her belongings packed up to leave if she felt there was hope for her here.
Top answer
I don't see anything wrong with those sentences/tenses. The short sentence indicates that "that is obvious now and probably wasn't obvious in the past at the time of the events taking place. One could argue that the last sentence needs "had felt" but this substitution (simple past for past perfect) has become so common that hardly anyone will notice.
- I don't see anything wrong with those sentences/tenses.
- The short sentence indicates that "that is obvious now and probably wasn't obvious in the past at the time of the events taking place.
- One could argue that the last sentence needs "had felt" but this substitution (simple past for past perfect) has become so common that hardly anyone will notice.
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1 Answers
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I don't see anything wrong with those sentences/tenses. The short sentence indicates that "that is obvious now and probably wasn't obvious in the past at the time of the events taking place.
One could argue that the last sentence needs "had felt" but this substitution (simple past for past perfect) has become so common that hardly anyone will notice.
One could argue that the last sentence needs "had felt" but this substitution (simple past for past perfect) has become so common that hardly anyone will notice.
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