Hello, Write Owls. Welcome to Day Seven of Grammar 110. Today we’re covering all of the verb tenses. If you want to know about writing in past tense versus present tense, I have a lesson from a previous camp here.
There are twelve different tenses. Here are examples of each one.
To indicate something is happening right now, use present tense or present progressive tense.
Present Tense: I write novels.
Present Progressive Tense: I am writing novels.
To indicate something happened in the past and is continuing in the present, use present perfect tense or present perfect progressive tense.
Present Perfect Tense: I have written novels.
Present Perfect Progressive Tense: I have been writing novels.
To indicate something happened in the past and it is no longer continuing, use past tense or past progressive tense.
Past Tense: I wrote novels.
Past Progressive Tense: I was writing novels.
To indicate something happened in the past before something else happened in the past, use past perfect tense or past perfect progressive tense.
Past Perfect Tense: I had written a novel by the time I started college.
Past Perfect Progressive Tense: I had been writing my novel for five years before I started college.
To indicate something will happen in the future, use future tense or future progressive tense.
Future Tense: I will write novels.
Future Progressive Tense: I will be writing novels.
To indicate something will happen in the future before another future event, use future perfect tense or future perfect progressive tense.
Future Perfect Tense: I will have written novels for five years by the time I start college.
Future Perfect Progressive Tense: I will have been writing novels for five years by the time I start college.
Those are the twelve tenses. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments down below, and I’ll answer them either as a reply or in my Q&A on Saturday.
For practice see if you can figure out what tense each of these sentences is.
1. I have been interested in archaeology my whole life.
2. I love digging in the dirt and finding artifacts that haven’t been seen in hundreds or thousands of years.
3. I will have worked multiple archaeology jobs before attending graduate school.
4. I had been destroying artifacts’ context before I learned proper excavation methods.
J. L. Weinmeister 