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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/28422
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/28422
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Stop worrying about this stuff. English tenses are enormously complicated, but they are tools of analysis, not composition. If you are a native English speaker you will have learned how tenses are used in English by osmosis. Trying to follow the explicit rules that have be developed to explain how tenses work in natural English will be both agonizing and pointless.

Natural English is a very fluid and flexible language full of particular bits of usage that are very hard to fit to rules. Thus attempting to come up with a grammatical system to fully encompases all of natural English is very difficult -- and has not yet been achieved. English, in particular, is a language that has to be learned by ear, not by rule. The rules are as apt to lead you astray as they are to lead you to clarity -- not because they are wrong necessarily, but because they are so hard to apply. You have to be already a fluent writer of English to be able to tell how grammatical "rules" actually apply to natural English.

Most of the problems in this area are not caused by failure to understand tenses as described by grammarians -- not one writer in a hundred knows all the categories and terminology. The problems come from an unwillingness to recast awkward sentences. If you have a sentence that seems awkward or unnatural to you, don't waste time trying to fix it by the application of grammar rules. Rewrite it so it is simple and more direct and all will be well.

Original score: 1