Tense questions

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Anonymous  #509289  Sun, 04 May 08 10:19 AM

Hi,

1. Please tell me why it has to be in the present tense. Please look at 'says' at the Final Line.

A Joke in "Think English", the name of a supplementary paper/insert that came with the Saturday, April 19, 2008 issue of JoongAng Daily/Herald International Tribune:

The name of joke is "Who Should Brew the Coffee"  

Paraphrase of rest of the content: A man and his wife were arguing over who should prepare coffee and while arguing over who should do it, the wife mentions that a man should do it because it is even in the Bible that he should make coffee. Disbelieving that it exists, the man asked his wife for the part in the Bible.

Final line: The wife then fetched the Bible, and opened the New Testament and showed him at the top of several pages, that it indeed says... "HEBREWS"   

2. Why is it has to be in present perfect?

Introducing his book:

The items in this book are based on ... A word can have many meanings ... I have had to be selective and have often only been able to illustrate one of several possible  meanings.

  
Ant_222  #509317  Sun, 04 May 08 11:50 AM
  "1. Please tell me why it has to  be  in  the  present  tense.
   Please look at 'says' at the Final Line."

  It doesn't have to. Another possibility could be to  use  Past
  Simple.  It  is  allowed  to  omit  tense  shifting  when  the
  subordinate clause contains an actual statement or  a  general
  truth:

  "Holmes didn't know that Earth revolves about the Sun"

  "Why is it has to be in present perfect?"

  Again,  Past  Simple  is  also  possible,  but  it   wouildn't
  encourage thinking of the book as a _result_  of  a  long  and
  hard work that has at last been finished and presented to  the
  reader.
  
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