By Present tenses, Simple present

. If I asked you to do me only one kindness, Vincent, it would be to avoid the simple present tense. It makes most of your sentences slightly unreal. Do you think that you could do that for me in the future, Vincent? Just one simple thing-- use a different tense and aspect. Use past or...

Let us recast the sentence in direct speech, that is, you are speaking to Mark, "When you arrive (simple present tense is most suitable here - I wonder you can use any other tense), we shall/will go out for dinner."When you turn that into an indirect speech, the sentence will become,...

Present Perfect is formed with the auxiliary have and the past participle of some verb: have seen, has done, have lived. Present Perfect Progressive is formed with the auxiliaries have and been and the present participle of some verb: have been seeing, has been doing, has been living.CJ

Hi everyone,I have a few grammar questions and I don't know how to answer them:Explain why the verb “To Be” is not a non-progressive verb?I know the simple present never talks about the present but what can be an exception to this rule?Why does the present tense not exist in English? What...

Amy: «Ant, I think you need to reread GG's post. After "I thought," do NOT use the simple present tense.» I have read this commandment (sic!) about a million times in about a hundread threads, and all that in the past two or three days. In my previous post I didn't call it...

Ant, I think you need to reread GG's post. After "I thought," do NOT use the simple present tense. However, you could use the simple present tense in a direct quote:"The spider is an insect," I thought (to myself)."He is married," I thought (to myself).

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...

If you'll note the time of post, Jim and I posted a minute apart, clearly writing our posts at the same time. NO! "I thought..." REQUIRES past. Present tense is NOT possible! It doesn't have to turn out to be false.It can turn out that what you thought came true. A:...

I thought *only* simple present is (oops, should be was) correct, but I thought wrong. I now know that both present tense and past tense are possible. Sorry for the confusion.I always have problems on this. How to avoid this confusion?When I say "I thought", does it mean what "I...

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?) ...