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Mary Petrusevich Posted 12 years ago
Grammar

Which tense should i use after "Before"

Hi everybody. Sometimes English is killing me Emotion: smile)
Explain me please)
There is the sentence :
It will take a while before household survey data will be available for assessment bla bla bla...
I saw this in the book. So it seems to me that it would be grammatically better to say :
It will take a while before household survey data is available for assessment bla bla bla...
when a schoolgirl my teacher said me that in such sentences (when/if/before/after and so on) we don't use future tenses.

Thanks for help!
Mary.
  

Top answer

Mary Petrusevich my teacher said me that in such sentences (when/if/before/after and so on) we don't use future tenses Native speakers usually use present for future in such dependent clauses, but the future form is not always wrong. It is fine in your example sentence, but I could not use future here: I'll see you before I leave .

— Mister Micawber

  • Mary Petrusevich my teacher said me that in such sentences (when/if/before/after and so on) we don't use future tenses Native speakers usually use present for future in such dependent clauses, but the future form is not always wrong.
  • It is fine in your example sentence, but I could not use future here: I'll see you before I leave .
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5 Answers
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Mary Petrusevichmy teacher said me that in such sentences (when/if/before/after and so on) we don't use future tenses
Native speakers usually use present for future in such dependent clauses, but the future form is not always wrong. It is fine in your example sentence, but I could not use future here:

I'll see you before I leave.
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Mary PetrusevichSo it seems to me that it would be grammatically better to say :It will take a while before household survey data is available for assessment
Yes, you are probably right. But it is grammatical nitpicking.
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Mary PetrusevichWhen I was a schoolgirl my teacher said told me that in such sentences (when/if/before/after and so on) we don't use future tenses.
Yes, but you're getting interference from the idiom "to take ( time) before", where the 'rule'
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So, if i got it right we can't just say "when a student" or "when a schoolgirl" instead of "when i was a student or a schoolgirl" ?)
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Mary PetrusevichSo, if i got it right we can't just say "when a student" or "when a schoolgirl" instead of "when i was a student or a schoolgirl" ?)
Your version is OK. It's just that I prefer the version I wrote.

I put corrections of mistakes in red and my suggestions in blue. The blue does not indicate that you have made a mistake.

CJ
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