By Tenses, Present tenses

mbouti has a point here. The crazy tenses in the OP excerpt set the present tense as the time when TR was/is six years old watching Lincoln's funeral procession. Therefore, the equivalent should be, "who would one day become his second wife" would be equal to, "who is one day...

Best to wait for the mod squad.My ear says (who would one day be his second wife) equals (who was one day to be / become his second wife.) That is, would be = was to be.The use of present tense in your original italicized excerpt makes it sound like the voice-over in a documentary film. - A.

Hmm! I'm not sure about prescription, but the "if" clause refers to a past event, while the "would" clause refers to a future one so my guess is it's perfectly valid. It sounds natural too.

These are my answers and I hope you'll correct the wrong ones. ..am reading.. works see are you speaking to don't know comes likes does Tom usually have..? leaves does May do...? goes go is ringing falls is changing is getting comes is growing grows are leaving leave is taking changes...

Hi,Can any one confirm whether this I wrote is a correct mixed condition with present-time meaning and goes well with the present tense of the sentence it is preceding? Thank youI remember Sue, who transferred to another school just two months before this graduation date. Had she stayed in our...

Vincent, you often use present tense, and in real life, we don't use that very often. Every day, the shoes are put beside the flower pot -- this is not a very likely sentence. The last I noticed, the shoes had been put besides the flower pot. Are they no longer there? She put the shoes...

Thank you. It will take some time to reflect upon your response. As to your question of where I wanted to put a semicolon, it was in the underlined part. I was pretty sure a semicolon is appropriate but wanted to confirm. You changed the tense of the last sentence to present perfect; (semicolon...

I should have edited the post - they are clearly related, but the first three seemed unrelated to each other.I broke them into each line so I could comment one by one. I think the probable date I noted for his visit is one month from the day of writingYou wrote, "If I sleep one more day, I...

Thank you so much.How would you divide this type of writing (diary or reflection piece?) into paragraphs, especially when the content of a possible paragraph is two or thre sentences long?You asked: I am starting to work on my two-month project on today this afternoon;, and when my nephew gets...

Hi,We usually don't use 'feed' when speaking of liquids.She gives her cat some milk.She gives her cat something to drink twice.Vincent, Mr. Micawber suggested that you try to use a variety of other tenses in your examples. That was good advice, because people get very tired of...