New answers tagged present-perfect
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Haven't spoken or haven't been speaking
This isn't really a grammar problem, it's more of a logic one. "Speaking" is both something that could happen for a specific discrete time or for a period of time. You say, "evidently, ...
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Why is it present perfect here?
There are various uses to the present perfect; it signals the past without specifying when something is done. As compared to the finished action of the simple past. It also is used to mean up to the ...
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Why is it present perfect here?
In both of the fragments you enquire about,
“Often in the notes and essays I have had to…”
and
“in this book at least this range has been my priority,”
the author is conceiving of the writing of ...
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Tenses in subordinate clauses
The difference is that with present simple the clause refers to the time when the event starts, but with the present perfect version, it refers to the time when the event is finished.
So your sentence ...
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Without context, is there any difference between "had been cancelled" and "was cancelled"?
I rang the station, and they told me that the train had been cancelled.
All the past perfect needs is to have another verb in the simple past because that way you know it happened before I rang the ...
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Without context, is there any difference between "had been cancelled" and "was cancelled"?
There's no real difference between Past Perfect and Simple Past in OP's context. But see this chart showing that told me what had happened was twice as common as told me what happened before WW2, but ...
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Present/Past Perfect/Past Simple with "Until now"
Why is the usage of the Present Perfect tense here justified?
If the sentence refers to a time in the past, you should use some version of a past tense: "Until last year, it (had been/was) ...
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tense with until today
It's quite common and natural to use present perfect if the change is quite recent. It's also correct to use past perfect in those situations. It depends what you're trying to express.
With present ...
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I <have> <had> never eaten sushi before
So, this is a case of present perfect (I have) versus past perfect (I had).
In this case, since the sushi eating is in the present, it would be "I have". If you were telling a story about ...
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