Definition and Examples of Tense Shifts in English

Definition and Examples of Tense Shifts in English In English grammar, tense shift refers to the change from one verb tense to another (usually from past to present, or vice versa) within a sentence or paragraph. A writer may temporarily shift from past tense to present tense in order to enhance the vividness of a narrative account.   In prescriptive grammar, writers are cautioned to avoid unnecessary  shifts in tense. Unmotivated shifts between present and past may obscure meaning and confuse readers. Examples and Observations The bridge was still open then, and I was up there one day mowing the grass alongside the road, just minding my own business, when I see something moving out of the corner of my eye. - C.J. Fisher, The Legend of Diadamia. AuthorHouse, 2005Staring rigidly up at it, Justin is listening to her joyous protestations at his right side. Dizzy from travel, laden with last-minute hand luggage, the two of them have minutes earlier arrived here from London for the first time. - John le Carrà ©, The Constant Gardener. Hodder Stoughton, 2001 Gliding From One Tense to Another It is possible to glide from one tense to another in the course of one sentence, but the key to doing it is always to be in control, to know what you are doing, what effect you are hoping to achieve.   In The Literary Review (February 2006), Francis King comments with admiration on how D.J. Taylor in his novel Kept frequently shifts gears from past tense to present to tauten a scene. And in an essay Glitches (Granta 27), John Gregory Dunne writes: Off the road there was what appeared to be a reviewing stand, and I sat there for a few moments, taking in the museum and the cold blue Sunday sky, taking stock, what to do, what to do next, Id really hate to cancel dinner tonight . . . Im breathing normally now, its OK A-OK, I wont even tell my wife, nor Tim, especially not Tim, I feel fit as a fiddle now. He wasnt though, but thats another story, told by his wife, Joan Didion, in The Year of Magical Thinking. Just notice the tense shift. - Carmel Bird, Writing The Story Of Your Life. HarperCollins, 2007 The Effect of Tense Shift in A Tale of Two Cities A Tale of Two Cities [by Charles Dickens] has a tense shift at a great moment of the story. After the trial and after Sydney Carton has taken the place of Charles Darnay in jail, the drugged Darnay and his family are fleeing in the stagecoach from Paris. Suddenly we find that the story is in the present tense. This adds vividness and excitement and here marks a peak which encodes part of the notional structure denouement of the story. - Robert E. Longacre, The Grammar of Discourse, 2nd ed. Plenum Press, 1996 Legitimate Tense Shifts Sometimes writers shift from past to present tense when telling a story to add vividness to the events.  This legitimate  tense shift is  a literary device called the historical present. It is familiar to readers of epic poetry, but people also use it when relating everyday anecdotes: I was walking down Delancey Street the other day when a guy comes up to me and asks me for the time. - (The American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style. Houghton Mifflin, 2005) Usage Tips: Avoiding Needless Tense Shifts What is an example of an unmotivated shift in tense in writing? One example is starting a story in past tense and suddenly shifting into present tense:Last week I was walking along a street when this man walks up to me and says . . .We do this in speech all the time, but in formal writing its considered to be an error. - Edward L. Smith and Stephen A. Bernhardt, Writing At Work: Professional Writing Skills for People on the Job. NTC Publishing, 1997)Tense places the action of the verb in time: Today I go. Yesterday I went. Tomorrow I will go. Different verbs in a sentence or paragraph may logically use different tenses to reflect actions at different times.We will play tennis before we eat breakfast but after we have had our coffee.The tense you select to describe most of the actions in your paper is called the governing tense. Once you establish it, do not use another tense without a good reason. . . .The literary present tense is used to describe literature or art. If you use it, d o so consistently. - Toby Fulwiler and Alan R. Hayakawa, The Blair Handbook. Prentice Hall, 2003 It is common practice to analyze literary works in present tense. Thus, you would write, Pearl is a difficult child rather than Pearl was a difficult child in an analysis of Hawthornes The Scarlet Letter. If you are quoting a critic who has used a past tense verb in a particular sentence, you may change the tense of the critics verb by typing the tense you wish to use in square brackets. This bracketed change of tense avoids an awkward verb tense shift in your text.As a general rule of thumb, however, avoid changing the tense of verbs in the text of a literary work you are analyzing. - Linda Smoak Schwartz, The Wadsworth Guide to MLA Documentation, 2nd ed. Wadsworth, 2011

142 Million Reasons to Vote Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

142 Million Reasons to Vote - Essay Example Voting is one of the most important civic privileges we have.Voter participation results in a better informed citizenry, allows us to directly participate in our political system, and assures that our founding principles will remain intact for future generations.When people vote, it demands that they make a decision on whom to vote for. In their effort to choose the candidates of their choice, they may seek information from a variety of sources. They watch the evening news and surf the Internet. They tune into the debates and measure the candidate's words carefully. By the time Election Day rolls around, the voter feels confident that they have made the right choice. When asked, "Why did you vote for her", the voter will be able to articulate all the reasons. This inevitably results in a better informed citizenry, and that spells better government.We often refer to our leaders as "the government" or hear people say "their policies". However, the correct phrases should be "our governm ent" and "our policies". By participating in the voting process, we decide what our government will look like and what our policies will be. This is especially true on a local level when there are decisions to be made about how to spend scarce tax dollars. Voting is our direct link to the political process and our policies, projects, and legislation

Management of information technology Bachelor Essay

Management of information technology Bachelor - Essay Example And the study also mainly analyses the reality behind the privacy issue of the consumer. The study also concentrates on the supporting guidelines and practices in use for sustainable management to prevent the privacy concerns with RFID. RFID enables not only automatic supply chain data collection to improve inventory visibility and reduce stock outs at the retail level, it can also result in reduced need for manual handling, labor cost reductions, greater accuracy of shipments, and other benefits, (arcweb) RFID solutions provide real-time information by automatically detecting product movements throughout the distribution process. RFID technology provides real-time inventory visibility while minimizing the need for manual checks, allowing to: - The key to success in the retail RFID market depends on optimizing hardware, software and middleware roles and providing one-stop complete suites or solutions, which facilitate easy integration across the three domains," Shyam While RFID is reaching retailers across the revenue barrier, the high level of investment allows only the biggest retailers (typically $5 billion and above in revenues) to pilot and roll out the RFID technology in their stores and distribution centers, Shyam. The concepts of Distribution chain and logistics are closely connected in the context of raw materials, manufacturers, transporters, warehouses, retailers, and the customers themselves. The functions include the flow of information, and the transformation and delivery of goods from raw material stage through to the end user (Handfield and Nichols 1999 p. 2; Chopra and Meindl 2001, p. 3). Significant factors that determine the success of a supply chain and distribution outlets include process integration among the suppliers and

Columbian Exchange Essay Example for Free

Columbian Exchange Essay The term Columbian Exchange refers to the large-scale exchange of animals, plants, goods, diseases and people between the Old and New Worlds. This event is one of the more significant events of all-time as it marks the beginning of the modern era of history. Not only were Native Americans greatly impacted by the Columbian Exchange as it brought them devastation and catastrophe, but the Europeans were also affected as they benefited from the precious metals and agriculture they received. This exchange helps to explain why Europe was able to rise, prosper and go on to become a super power. The devastation of the Natives led to a great demand for labor which was met with the enslavement of approximately 12 million Africans over a 400 year period. While Africans were being sold as slaves and the Native Americans were being decimated by diseases introduced to them from the Old World, European nations took advantage of the depopulation and weakening of various cultures and more than likely had an easier time conquering this New World because of the diseases they spread. The exchange of foods and spices to Europe introduced foods like potatoes, tomatoes, and maize which became staples in European diet. These foods helped improve nourishment and vitamin intake and in turn led to an overall higher level of health amongst European people. â€Å"..This happened in no place that we could learn, but where we had been†(Thomas Hariot, 1589). The transfer of disease from the Old World significantly affected the Native Americans of the New World. For one, Native Americans began to become so desperate for a remedy that they began to convert from their cultural beliefs to Christianity as they believed that would bring an end to the disease as is evident in this quote; â€Å"†¦Some of the [Indian] Counselors were of the opinion, that by embracing Christianity the contagion would cease†. (2) Conversions to Christianity of course did little to curve the debilitating effects of disease on the Native American people as their population continued to drop at an alarming rate. Around 90% of the Native Population was depleted within a century and a half after the discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus in 1492.(Faragher, 37) The ravaging of these Native American people by diseases does much to explain the incredible success of the Spanish as they conquered the Aztecs and later on the Inca civilization of the Andes, and Europe’s rather quick rise to success overall. It basically paved the way for the conversion and destruction of Native American traditions and culture. 1. John Mack Faragher, Out of Many ( New Jersey: Pearson, 2012), 37

A Doll’s House Essay -- Literary Analysis, Kate Chopin

As a child progresses through the various stages of life, he or she may crawl across the knots of knitted carpet, gallop around the plastic structures of a schoolyard and weave amongst a mass of people, each one traveling a different route to arrive at destinations poles apart, but unless a sense of worth, instilled by a parent’s assurance, overflows from the mouth of this developing being, the journey to find oneself amid the throng of individuals will prove an arduous and extensive one—possibly spanning one’s lifetime. Kate Chopin, in The Awakening, and Henrik Ibsen, in A Doll’s House, understood the significance of a parental figure in the development of a young person’s self-esteem, even in the Victorian Era, highlighting this fact with a void in the parental seat of the lives’ of their protagonists, Edna Pontellier and Nora Helmer, respectively. The vacant maternal role and feeble paternal relationship influences each of the protagonis ts’ sense of self-worth, which projects through relationships with their husbands, children, society as a whole and, their ultimate choice of abandonment. Employing realism, ridding the work of all fantasy and overtly extravagant elements for the audience to recognize themselves in various situations, Chopin and Ibsen allow â€Å"unfolding† (Roberts 1664) events as their works progressed, to disclose events previous to the span of the work; they cast shadows on events in literary present, exposing the cause of the problem—the mother’s absence in the protagonists’ lives. In the case of Edna Pontellier, her father’s â€Å"authority† (Chopin 77), â€Å"putting [his] foot down good and hard† (77), facilitated her mother’s expedition to the grave, while Nora Helmer’s mother goes without mention over the play’... ...arch of other’s to tell her of her beauty, for she does not have this revelation within herself since her father seemingly forgot to inform her. Likewise, Nora, although the decision lacked good, needed to Anne’s confirmation that her children â€Å"would [not] forget their mother† (Ibsen 30) if she were to leave, due to her inability to come to this conclusion alone; both search for others’ approval and finding that it comes only from within, each abandon their oppressing forces which all stem from their society’s establishments. In the denouements of both works, the protagonist realizes that their entire lives have been guided and charted by others rather than themselves and make a decision to press forward, without the superfluous contributions and disdain of others, despite the ramifications such a decision incurs, such as the repetition of the motherless child.

Evaluate the morality of specific actions Essay

Imagine a pilot enter the cabinet and flies the plane to great heights beyond the reach of the eyes; that is his normal job. And suddenly, storms begin to wage war against the plane and the passengers. It is the responsibility of the pilot to find ways to maintain order, protect the lives and property of the passengers above every other thing. In this situation, with the necessary assistance, he would stretch his mind and brain to pilot the plane to safety. Or imagine a doctor at the emergency ward; he is confronted with a large number of rescuers from a nearby road traffic accident, he can not procrastinate his intervention. By that, people would die. That’s not good; it is wickedness. He must rise to the occasion and give his best to resuscitate those lives; otherwise he stands the risk of prosecution for negligence of diet. A reporter makes a mistake in a magazine article, you can run a correction; but when a health care worker makes a mistake, someone can die. A close and in-depth thought of this profound statement would show that we need to hold people in certain professions to higher standards of legal accountability and responsibility. Humans are liable to errors but such errors should be limited within the spectacle of manageable danger. The outcomes of some errors are more dangerous than others. This is reason ethics have become an integral part of major professions. It underscores the need for accountability as a means of maintaining order and balance within organization. As much as some errors can not be avoided or better still are unprecedented, ethics guides into an error-free environment. With the aforementioned examples and the place of ethics, one would realize that it is important to attach the appropriate standard to different professions based on the outcome of a mistake. It is indeed possible to rewrite a report than replace a life. Occupations that deal directly with life should attract the highest standard; such include health care, transportation, and food and drugs production. This helps to maintain reduce casualties resulting from mistakes. There is also improved service. However, such a relative distribution can encourage lackadaisical input from such ‘lowered’ professions accrued lower standards. And this may not be good for the nation. In any way, ethics per profession continues to be the standard. This position is indeed consistent with the moral philosophy propagated earlier. To whom much is given much is expected. There is no deviation form the philosophy earlier propagated.

Gun Control Discussion ( 100 Points ) Essay - 2462 Words

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Literature Review: Research several types of information. Discuss several Pro and Cons positions by others and include at least 2 references for the Pro and Con arguments. This section should also clearly present both sides of the issue being discussed. Summarize the main issues on both sides by providing information on what the different sources say about the issue. Discuss at least two actual legal cases on your issue and their outcome. Take a position and argue for either the Pro or Con sideShow MoreRelatedGun Rights And Issues Of The United States1558 Words   |  7 Pages Gun Rights and Issues The second amendment states, â€Å"A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a Free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed†. As stated in the Wikipedia cite focused on the second amendment, â€Å"The right to bear arms is the people s right to have their own arms for their defense†. 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