By Grammar, Simple past

.You are printing a certificate which states a factual event in historical time. The verb tense you use has nothing to do with when you conceive, print or present the certificate. Use the simple past with the date service began and the date service finished.

This one's a stinker. You could argue that "My natural answer" and "My instinct" amount to the same thing.My position is that although your instinct may be called a continuing condition, on this particular occasion it "spoke" to you only once, in response to the...

Hi New2grammar When time is mentioned, the simple past temse is used. For example, It rained heavily yesterday.

Hello, everyone. One of my grammar books says both past perfect and simple past tense mean the same thing in the following example: When the teacher had arrived, they stopped talking.=When the teacher arrived, they stopped talking. But my another book says they don't mean the same thing. It...

The condition is that the if clause may be fulfilled. In your sentences it is already impossible to fulfil the if clause making the sentences purely hypothesis. This is known as a type III conditional and is formed thus: if + past perfect + would + have + past participle. A conditional formed...

No. Your version suggests that the dam willl probably break. 'Were' is used in the first sentence. Therefore you have to use 'were' in the other sentence.

Applicant: Hello. I'm here for that job for which you need a technician. My grammar is good. For example, I never end a sentence with a preposition. *smile*Employer: Oh, that don't matter. *smile* We gotta do some stuff with computers, websites, y'know, crap like that. *light a cigar*...

Thank you Grammar Geek. The past perfect is not to be used for a definite point of time in the past (like yesterday). Like it or not, I am afraid this is the rule. I have come across a blog post titled Simple Past Tense against Past Perfect which hopefully can do the necessary...

I think New2grammar said that, to him, a past perfect always precedes a present. It seems that is not always correct, isn't it?? CalifJim wrote: To be sure, I think we'd need at least one paragraph that precedes this sentence. Maybe the first part about the dogs should have read...

GG, Maybe it’s a misperception on my part. I agreed your example is prefectly legal (w/ a minor addition). Please correct me if I am wrong. Most people will likely treat recent events with a simple past tense, won’t they; especially when the event happened recently? A-Where did you go? Your...