Consistent verb tense means the same verb tense is used throughout a sentence or a paragraph. As you write and revise, make sure you use the same verb tense consistently and avoid shifting from one tense to another unless there is a good reason for it.
Present tense: She walks to class every day.
Past tense: She walked to class yesterday.
In simple sentences such as these, choosing a verb tense is fairly straightforward. The author decides when to place the event in time and chooses the corresponding verb form.
Although people easily use different verb tenses every day, getting them right in writing can be tricky at times. Writers may accidentally change from past to present tense within a text - or even within the same sentence - for no particular reason. Consider these examples:
Sentence 1: I lost a glove on my walk, but I find it later.
Sentence 2: I lost a glove on my walk, but I found it later
In Sentence 1, the verb lost places the action in the past; the present-tense verb find is not consistent with that pattern. The revision in Sentence 2 places all of the action in the same time frame: the past. Because changing the tense for no reason can confuse the audience, be sure to use the same verb tense throughout, whether events happen in the past or they happen in the present.
However, in some cases, clear communication will call for different tenses. Look at the following example:
When I was a teenager, I wanted to be a firefighter, but now I am studying computer science.
In the above example, the writer talks about a past desire and then about their present situation. Therefore, whenever the time frame for each action or state is different, a tense shift is appropriate.
The short video below illustrates the idea of tense consistency in writing.
Guidelines
DO NOT SHIFT FROM ONE TENSE TO ANOTHER IF THE TIME FRAME OF THE ACTIONS IS THE SAME:
- The Spanish teacher explains the grammatical structures to the students who were confused. (incorrect)
- The Spanish teacher explains the grammatical structures to the students who are confused. (correct)
The sentence expresses habitual actions, so both need to be in the present tense.
SHIFT TENSES TO INDICATE A CHANGE IN THE TIME FRAME IN THE ACTIONS:
- The children love their grandparents, and they visit them last weekend. (incorrect)
- The children love their grandparents, and they visited them last weekend. (correct)
The first action (to love) is habitual, but the second action (to visit) is a completed action that occurred in the past.
Now that we remember the role of main, or lexical, verbs in sentences and know the importance of maintaining tense consistency, let's look at improving sentence clarity by avoiding unnecessary tense shifts in our sentences.