Why Is It Important to Mind Tenses in Your Paper?
Tenses indicate the time when an event took place. They also enable readers to connect different events by the time they happened. Therefore, if the tenses are not right, it would be hard for the content to make any sense. Besides, you would have lost the logical flow in the article.
Poor use of tenses also makes you look like you do not understand the topic you are writing about. Readers perceive good grammar and tenses as an indicator that you know what you are talking about. Besides, if you are writing an academic paper, poor use of tenses may lead to a paper without clarity and consequently lead to low grades. This, in turn, may have negative effects not only on your overall grades but also in your career. Therefore, it is important that you mind your grammar and tenses by proofreading work after writing. If you are wondering, “How do I check my tenses?” A grammar tense checker and faulty tense sequence checker can help polish your paper.
How to Check Proper Verb Tense in Your Paper
If you are able to identify verb tenses correctly, it becomes easy to find and fix issues with your writing. There are three main tenses in English; present, past and future tense. Under each, several verb forms include simple, continuous and perfect, eventually raising the number to 12 different tenses.
The present tense is used to describe events that are happening or happen regularly in the present, for example. ‘The earth is round’. The continuous form describes an event that is happening now. For example, ‘He is eating his lunch.’
The past tense describes events that happened in the past. For example, “She went home.” In continuous form, you describe events that were continuing before something happened. For example, “I was dressing when the fire started.” Finally, the perfect tense relates two events that happened in the past. For example, “He had returned home before the storm begun.”
The Future tense describes events that will happen in the future. For example, “I will visit him tomorrow. In the continuous form, it shows an event that will be continuing. For example, I will be refilling the water bottle each week. The future perfect shows events that will complete before others start. For example, ‘James will have left by the time she comes home.’
You may use a tense editor to know how to fix verb tense problems.
7 Helpful Tips on How to Fix Verb Tense Problems
Know your writing genre
The type of paper you write determines the tenses to use. A historical thesis will use past tense while a description uses the present tense. This answers the question, “What tense should an essay be written in?”
Use a tense that best serves the narrative
Where you have various options, choose the tense that makes your paper clear and is easy to write. For example, most authors like writing novels in the present tense, as it is simple and clear.
Be consistent in your tenses
Unless you want to describe an event that happened at some other timeline, keep to your selected tense. You may use free software check tense in writing to find and fix tense shift errors in your paper.
Play well with time shifts
You can use tenses to engage your readers or the professor if writing an academic paper. It is worthwhile to describe events in other periods to support your current story. Just ensure that you do it correctly. An English tenses checker online can help.
Ensure that verb forms agree with other parts of speech
Ensure that your sentences are grammatically sound by checking the noun-verb agreement and other English rules. Read your work to identify where it does not sound right. If you are saying, “I need help with tenses.” You may pick a tense changer for editing.
Be careful on verb forms
After determining the right tense, check the verb form that you pick. Is it past simple, present perfect or the future continuous tense? Check if the action is happening, happened before another or just concluded.
Use a tool to check tenses
Consider using English tenses checker online to find and fix tense errors. Pick a tool that is versatile and accurate in finding and correcting errors.
Reasons to Use Grammar Tense Checker Now
Whether you know how to check proper verb tense or not, grammar tenses check online is a great tool to help polish your paper. Here are reasons to use our tool now:
- It will help find and fix tense errors that you may have missed when proofreading.
- It has a past and present tense maker to change incorrect verb tense shifts according to your writing.
- It is easy to use and does not store your content after you check it for tenses.
The tool has an inbuilt free online check spelling and grammar tenses that helps correct errors in spelling, word usage, punctuation and filer. It underlines the problem words and phrases and suggests the changes that are best fitting to make it easy to polish your paper.
Examples of How Verb Tense Modifier Can Change Sentences
There are several ways that you can use the verb tense modifier to correct your content. Here are some examples of the way it works.
The school bus broke down on the way to the school. The driver has called the school for the other bus to come for the pupils. Our past tense sentence maker changes the second sentence to, ‘The driver called the school for the other bus to come for the pupils.’
Here is another example, ‘Mary had lived in the city for ten years.’ Given that Mary is still living in the city, our grammar help tenses tool will change the sentence to ‘Mary has lived in the city for ten years.’
And another one too, ‘John will turn eight next month. He was taller than his age mates.’ The tool can correct the second sentence to read, ‘He is taller than his age mates.’