Yesterday, I was wearing black clothes at work, so everybody kept asking me if anyone has just passed away.
My question is about the past continuous of "wear". Somebody told me It should be in the simple past tense.
-
2In your first sentence, "anyone has" should be "anyone had." This is because the past perfect is used to describe an event which happens before another event which is in the past. "kept asking" refers to a past event, and "had just passed away" refers to an event which would have occurred previous to that (even if only hypothetically)– Quack E. DuckCommented Jun 17, 2023 at 19:43
Add a comment
|
3 Answers
Both are possible. I prefer "I was wearing black clothes at work", but "I wore black clothes to work" or "for work".
The first could be understood to mean that changed into black clothes for only part of the time you were at work. Nobody would actually think that, but it is possible, but for that reason I prefer the second expression, which says exactly what you mean: you went to work wearing black clothes.
Both are good grammar, but only the past continuous fits the context.
Generally speaking, when telling a story about the past, the simple past is for the main idea, and the past continuous is for the context, just what was happening in the background, rather than the actual story.
If you were wearing clothes at a place, it means you had those clothes on when you were there, presumably because you put them on before arriving. Past continuous provides the context for the main action of a story to happen. The main action is people asking if someone had died. The black clothes are just the context that triggered the main action, so past continuous is appropriate.
On the other hand, if you wore clothes at a place, it suggests that putting the clothes on is the main idea of the sentence, not the context for the rest, so it suggests the speaker intentionally put all black clothes on because they were at work, which is not the intent of this story.
With a small correction, both are acceptable
Yesterday, I was wearing black clothes at work, so everybody kept asking me if anyone had* just passed away.
Yesterday, I wore black clothes at work, so everybody kept asking me if anyone had* just passed away.
*You need to use "had" here to form the past perfect, because it's indirect reported speech. More info here
As to which you should choose, it would depend on the rest of the story/paragraph. Tense choice is dependent on the sequence of events in the wider context, not just one sentence.
