Page 851 - Wordsmith A Guide to College Writing
P. 851
Shifts in Tense
1 Identify and correct unnecessary shifts in
tense or provide necessary tense shifts.
Look at this sentence:
The balloon floated lazily upward and becomes a small dot
against the blue sky.
It contains an unnecessary shift from past tense to present tense.
Here is the corrected version:
The balloon floated lazily upward and became a small dot
against the blue sky.
Verb tenses give the English language its sense of time, its sense of
when events occur. The following timeline shows six verb tenses, and
the chart below the timeline briefly explains how each tense is used.
Informalexample Verb Tense Timeline
