By Simple past, Tenses

Nelson Mandela is a brave man who'd spent years in prison for his convictions.We tend to pay little attention to the proper use of past perfect tense in everyday conversation and get away with simple past without much critique. We all knew Mandela had spent a major part of his life in...

I agree with CB. The simple past tense could also be used.

My try:

I may also wish to add that if the main clause makes clear what kind of time we’re talking about, it’s usually unnecessary to repeat it in the subordinate clause. Use appropriate time in the main clause and use simpler (simple past instead of past perfect) tense structure in the subordinate.

Since I was not allowed to edit my old post, I would like to add that one of the discrete past-marking usages of the present perfect tense is for denoting an experience.

Hi Doll,If you'll forgive my saying so, I believe you misused the word since as a time marker.First of all, the statement “I have never eaten an apple”does not point to a specific time in the past. By itself, it means in your entire life since the day you were born till now. Therefore, “since...

Consider " a certain period of time " when you decide to use the present perfect tense. It has been a while since I have never eaten an apple = I haven't eaten an apple for quite a long time. It has been for a while since I have never argued with him= I haven't argued with...

Hi BeginStudentYou have scanned a sheet with exercises. For each set of sentences, one sentences uses the simple past tense and the other one uses the past progressive. Have you tried to do these exercises?When a participle ending with -ed is used as an adjective, it basically means that the...

Hoa Thai wrote:Hi Kooyeen and Goodman,In the relationship between the present perfect and simple past, we all know since is generally used to mark a time of an action in the past (simple past) to allow the second action to stretch from that time to the present (present perfect). Nevertheless, I...

Hi KooyeenI really don't have any statistics on which tense would be more frequently used in informal AmE in a passive sentence like yours. But I do think that we're more likely to the present perfect in "Damn! My bike's been stolen!" than to use the present perfect in "Damn! Somebody has...