By Past tenses, Sample

Sorry to have confused all of you. My statement"I thought *only* simple present was correct, but I thought wrong. I now know that both present tense and past tense are possible" was only referring to the sample sentence given by Jim(a) "My professor said that spiders are (were...

My apologies for introducing a joke! The "universal falsehood" reference is a complete joke! It doesn't matter whether what is reported is universally true or unversally false. What's important is that in the speaker's mind it is universally (or eternally, if you wish)...

Thank you very much indeed, Jim. That's a great explanation. You cleared all my doubts. Forgive me for thinking out loud as I hope you can correct me if I am still making any mistakes. Firstly, I didn't notice that it was (can only use "was", "is" not possible?) ...

He was right. Should have stayed just in the past, as this is a past experiement. The purpose of the exercise is to determine if there is a difference in using pH electrode or pH optical sensors when determining an unknown sample. A 95% confidence interval will be used as determined using...

Recently I had written a paper and it was graded by a grad student. On the paper the comments "Stay in one tense. Do not use past AND future tense." were placed next to the Materials and methods title. Will someone point out exactly where both past and future tense is being...

I'm not sure if there is any prescriptive rule to what I read in a statement as follows: ...after all these years, I asked him if he remembered who I was. The sentence sounded okay to me, but I was also confused as to whether the subjunctive should be at play here and if the past tense of...

Hi Anon, Next time you have a question on a new topic, please start a new thread, okay? I googled guide writing minutes and got a number of hits. This is from this: http://www.haringey.gov.uk/principles_and_concepts_of_writing_minutes - minutes are always written in the past tense and should...

I always feel uneasy when using "never" because I know that I will somehow make some grammatical mistakes. Till now, I'm still not so sure how it works. I thought that we always have to use it this way: -He has never seen the show. -I have never read that book. But then I have been...