Booher's Rules of Business Grammar - Dianna Booher 2009

He came, he saw, he conquered
Verbosity about verbs: The big blunders

DON’T BE LAX ABOUT TENSE CHANGES

Evidently Julius Caesar, the Roman general and statesman, knew what he was doing when he arrived on the scene: he came, he saw, he conquered. When the rest of us change verb tenses without cause, it raises questions—either about our confidence or about our grammar.

Verbs have tenses to reflect the time: present, past, future. “Pongo is not feeling well this morning” (present). “So he may go home from work this afternoon following his client teleconference” (future). “Yesterday, he left early to play golf” (past). “And I understand that he is planning to travel to a convention on Friday” (present). “Therefore, he will miss three consecutive staff meetings” (future). These clearly appropriate tense changes reflect different times.

The following sentence is a careless tense change without reason:

Incorrect:

Her e-mail included pricing; it also provides a volume-discount schedule.

Correct:

Her e-mail includes pricing; it also provides a volume-discount schedule.

Clarity becomes an issue in the following passage:

Ebeneezer’s expense report shows charges of $487 for the June trip. Dilbert’s expense report lists charges of $439 for the trip. Eldora’s report indicates expenses of $502 for the training program. Percival’s expense report showed charges of $898 for the training.

Question: did Percival travel at the same time the other three people did? Is the writer pointing out a discrepancy between the lower travel expenses submitted by his traveling companions Ebeneezer, Dilbert, and Eldora? Or, did Percival travel earlier than the other people? Is Percival padding his expense account?

But hold on a minute before you jump to conclusions: Did you notice that showed is in the past tense? If Percival traveled at an earlier date, maybe the airfare or the hotel cost more at that time. Maybe the point of the information about the expenses is that recent travel costs have been reduced.

My point: unnecessary tense changes create questions. Here’s another confusing passage.

Incorrect:

Phone inquiries were entered into the system as they come in and appear on the screen in front of the agents taking the calls. Agents have been trained to solicit only contact information. Customer service agents should transfer callers within 30 seconds. A third-party Web site will take the actual orders.

When in this process do phone inquiries get entered into the system? Are these entries part of the current process or an explanation of earlier steps? Because the tenses vary throughout, it sounds as though the phone entries happen prior to the present step in the process. Is the point here to outline steps to follow to get a job done—or to explain past action?

Correct:

Phone inquiries enter the system as they come in and appear on the screen in front of the agents taking the calls. Customer service agents solicit only contact information. Agents transfer callers within 30 seconds. A third-party Web site takes the actual orders.

In this rewritten passage, all the tenses match—present tense. All the action is clearly part of a current procedure.

If you intend to change tenses in the middle of a sentence or a passage, fine. No problem. Don’t let me stand in your way. By all means, you know what point you intend to make. Just don’t change tenses randomly. Such a change can cause misreading about what happens when.

To save time—yours and your reader’s—tenses should accurately reflect time.

Memory tip

Time is money. Be as careful with your tenses as with your tens.