Activity: Verb Tenses

Another consistency issue is regarding tense consistency. Read the following section and get some practice by doing the activity. When you are done, compare your responses to the answer key.

Verb Tense Consistency

In addition to parallelism, we need to also be consistent with verb tense. 

Tense refers to when a verb is taking place and in order for our readers to follow what we are saying, consistency is important. 

For example, read the following two sentences (I have placed the verbs in italics):

The shoplifter walked quickly toward the front of the store.  When a clerk shouts at him, he started to run.

It is very confusing that the shoplifter walked in the past, is shouted at in the present, and started to run in the past…. The author of these sentences is asking readers to do a time warp!

"The Time Warp" is a great song from a fantastic musical, but not such a cool thing to do to our readers…                        

To have tense consistency, the verbs need to match.

The shoplifter walked quickly toward the front of the store.  When a clerk shouted at him, he started to run.

Source: Erin Severs
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