Tenses

Question

Dear allwhat is the difference between1. We have already changed your password.and2. We already changed your password yesterday.and3. Your password has been changed.I'm looking forward to getting an answer.Katrin

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

1.

it says that the person+ the people they consider themselves to be with (e.g. thei company) have changed the password, so that the password has been changed. Already (a signal word for Present Perfect).

2. the same as above really, only Simple Past is used because a specific point in time is given with "yesterday". I'm not 100% sure but I'd say it would be possible to say "We have already changed your passowrd yesterday." if you want to emphasize the result (a new passowrd) although that is a lot less comon.

3. it is passive, which means the person who changed the passowrd is omitted. It sounds more technical, and only focuses on the password being changed. Other than that it means the same thing again.

So all in all, different Tenses/Voices (I think "voice" is what you would correctly call Active and Passive Forms) are used to pass on the same piece of information, putting focus on slightly different aspects (the rsult and who did it, when soemthing was done, the result again, but regardless of the person doing the action).

Dimsumexpress · Answer

Hi,

Just a couple of observations. I agree with most of your explanations. I noticed a trend with the first word of your sentence which you didn't capitalize but you did in the middle of paragraph and with proper names.

Present perfect should not be associated with past time markers; i.e. ago, last week etc. I know people do say things like: "I have seen her two hours ago". It's improper grammar.

Anonymous1.it says that the person+ the people they consider themselves to be with (e.g. thei company) have changed the password, so that the password has been changed. Already (a signal word for Present Perfect).

2.the same as above really, only Simple Past is used because a specific point in time is given with "yesterday". I'm not 100% sure but I'd say it would be possible to say "We have already changed your passowrd yesterday." if you want to emphasize the result (a new passowrd) although that is a lot less comon.

3. it is passive, which means the person who changed the passowrd is omitted. It sounds more technical, and only focuses on the password being changed. Other than that it means the same thing again.

Some people call this "Agentless Passive Voice"
So all in all, different Tenses/Voices (I think "voice" is what you would correctly call Active and Passive Forms) are used to pass on the same piece of information, putting focus on slightly different aspects (the rsult and who did it, when soemthing was done, the result again, but regardless of the person doing the action).

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