I am writing a diary to improve my English. I write it describing the situation at the end of the day. My grandmother arrived home yesterday.
How should I describe this?
My grandmother returned home.
or
My grandmother has returned home.
Are both correct?
Both are correct, but they have different meanings.
"My grandmother returned home" merely means that she returned in the past.
"My grandmother has returned home" means she returned in particular reference to the present.
"My grandmother had returned home" means that at some point in the past, she had returned in that past of that point.
Thus, you might write,
I went to school yesterday. My grandmother returned home while I was out. When I came back, my mother was preparing dinner to celebrate.
which just lists them as a sequence of events, in the past from the point of writing,
When I came back from school, my grandmother had returned home, and my mother was preparing a dinner to celebrate.
because the reference point for the return was your coming back from school, or
My mother said, "I'm making a dinner in celebration because your grandmother has returned home"
because the reference point is when she is speaking, which was the current time at the point she had spoke.
Since a diary is recounting past events, you would not use "has returned" except in reporting what people said or wrote, or discussing your current writing such as
I am writing this entry late because my grandmother has returned.
