Tenses (6).
Today: Threatened Obsolescence of Perfect Tenses.
Perhaps the heading here is overdrawn, but a distressingly large number of educated speakers of English seem at least mildly hostile to perfect tenses. There are three: the present perfect, the past perfect (or pluperfect), and the future perfect. And they’re worth some attention.
First, the present perfect tense is formed with “have” [+ past participle], as in “I have done that.” Either of two qualities must be present for this tense to be appropriate: indefiniteness of past time {They have seen Ely Cathedral before} or a continuation to the present {They have toiled at the project for three years now}. If neither of those qualities pertains to the context, then the present perfect isn’t the right tense.
The most common error is to use the present perfect form when the time is definite but the action doesn’t touch the present — e.g.: “They have toiled [read ‘toiled’] at the project for three years until last month.”
Second, the past perfect tense is formed with “had” [+ past participle], as in “I had done that.” This tense represents an action as completed at some definite time in the past — that is, before some other past time referred to {By June 26 the money had disappeared}.
Third, the future perfect tense is formed with “will” (or “shall”) [+ “have” + past participle], as in “I will have done that.” This tense represents an action that will be completed at some definite time in the future {She will have published her second book by the time she’s 30}.
Of these three types, the present perfect causes the most confusion. Some writers mistakenly equate it with passive voice — to which it has no relation. Others simply want to cut “have,” thereby converting the continuing action to a completed action. They may call this economizing, but it’s almost always a false economy. And if the “have”-cutters ever become numerous enough, they will have done (that’s future perfect) the language serious harm.
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Quotation of the Day: “Inexperienced writers often regard punctuation as a tiresome mechanical business to which little attention need be paid. There can be no greater mistake. Correct punctuation is a most important aid to clearness in writing. If you fail to use stops properly, you not only risk having your meaning misunderstood but you cause unnecessary irritation to your reader. Bad punctuation is, in fact, a form of bad manners.” M. Alderton Pink, Craftsmanship in Writing 26 (1960).
