Could anyone tell me if the sentence “There was a rumor that Citibank is in debt.” is grammatically correct ? Please advise me. Some say it is correct while others say it is ungrammatical. I’m lost. Answer Someone is thinking of the alleged rule (I was taught Latin names for these English forms, so oratio … Read more
My question is similar to this one and this one. However, I think I need further elaboration to understand at what points I am supposed to use present tense, and where to use past tense. Now, my prior was that present tense should generally be used to present research results. Some examples: Overall, value traded … Read more
I’ve tried to help you. The action happened in the past but I don’t say when. I tried to help you yesterday. The action happened in the past but I say when. More Examples: You can use the account that you’ve already created. You can use the account that you already created. I’ve sent you … Read more
They set unbelievably hard tasks to do, to see which one of us got the best deal. – Top Gear (TV show) I don’t understand; what is “got” doing in present tense? Or am I misunderstanding the sentence? Answer Got is past tense and it’s perfectly grammatical. That’s because set is also past tense, although, … Read more
In news papers we see headings like this "India signs a pact with Russia" "Sachin hits another century" "Obama wins presidential election" These are completed events, aren’t they? Then, why are these sentences not mentioned in past tense? Answer The headline of a newspaper was originally intended to attract the readers attention (and encourage them … Read more
I have a table and the description of the table as followed: Table 7 presents the likelihood of OPT occurrences from the time annotated sentences; V-RB refers to the sentences which contain post-verbal adverbs and RB-V refers to the sentences which contain pre-verbal adverbs. The OPT phenomenon manifested 68.18% of the time when an already … Read more
I want to communicate this: I didn’t think the zoo would attract visitors in its state at the time. What can I replace “state at the time” with? Perhaps something like “then-state”? I can’t say “current state”, because that would refer to the present state, not the state at the time I’m referring to. Answer … Read more
Let me provide one example from a local news: “Essentially what happened is the state approved the same dollar amount it did last year for the supplemental general fund” My thinking is, the above, as well generally, is incorrect b/c of the verb-agreement rules – and “what happened was” would be [more] correct, context depended … Read more
Possible Duplicates: He didn't know where New Jersey was… Tense change: previous actions on something that's currently true My wife and I were disagreeing about this today: Did you know Fred was a doctor? Did you know Fred is a doctor? I was arguing for (1) based on what seemed to “sound right.” My wife … Read more
Scenario: My friend John has a personality disorder, intensely paranoid for example. Can I say: There were three events last year that told me John had a problem. or can I say: There were threee events last year that told me John has a problem. Answer I agree with mgkrebbs in the case of storytelling. … Read more
