15.6
Compatibility of Tenses
■ Do not shift, or change, tenses when two or more events occur at the same
time.
INCORRECT
CORRECT
Teresa dived into the pool and swims to the other side.
[The tense needlessly shifts from the past to the present.]
Teresa dived into the pool and swam to the other side.
[Now it is clear that both events happened in the past.]
■ Shift tenses only to show that one event precedes or follows another.
INCORRECT
CORRECT
Shifting Verb Tenses Appropriately
Verb Tenses, Voice, and Mood
Exercise 18
After we hiked three miles, we stopped for a rest. [The
two past-tense verbs give the mistaken impression that
both events happened at the same time.]
After we had hiked three miles, we stopped for a rest.
[The shift from the past perfect tense (had hiked) to the
past tense (stopped) clearly indicates that the hiking of
three miles happened before the hikers stopped to rest.]
In each of these sentences, supply the appropriate form of the verb in parentheses. Shift
tenses if one event precedes or follows another; otherwise, use the same tense.
The Hundred Year Flood
1. The radio had warned them, but many people __________ anyway. (stay)
2. As the rain continued for days without stopping, the water in the river __________
steadily. (rise)
3. Boats drifted down the river and a frightened cow __________ by. (swim)
4. After the river __________ its banks, people found it was too late to escape. (overflow)
5. Some store owners __________ sandbags in front of their businesses to protect them,
but now the current was too strong to be stopped. (pile)
6. It was the kind of flood that __________ only once in a hundred years. (happen)
7. People across the nation watched the TV news that __________ incredible scenes of
devastation. (show)
8. Once the governor __________ a state of emergency, the National Guard was called.
(declare)
9. Helicopters hovered and __________ people from the roofs of their homes. (pluck)
10. After the flood had finally ended, people __________ to rebuild their lives. (begin)
15.6 Compatibility of Tenses
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Exercise 19
Making Tenses Compatible
First find the two verbs that appear in each of the following sentences. Then rewrite each
sentence, making the second verb compatible with the first verb.
Alice Walker, Prizewinning Writer
Verb Tenses, Voice, and Mood
1. Alice Walker was born in 1944 in rural Georgia, where, as the eighth child of sharecroppers, she had endured the hardships of poverty.
2. When her brother accidentally shot her with a BB gun, Alice becomes blind in one eye.
3. Because Alice was feeling depressed as a result of the injury, she turns to her journal and
books as outlets for her emotions.
4. By the time Walker participated in the Civil Rights movement, she enrolled in Spelman
College in Atlanta.
5. When she published her first book, a volume of poetry, she taught at Jackson State
University in Mississippi.
6. In this book, Walker wrote some poems about Africa, where she traveled as a college
junior.
7. Her book In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens, pays tribute to the strong, creative African
American woman and is encouraging women to safeguard their own creative legacy.
8. Long after the African American writer Zora Neale Hurston had died poor and forgotten, Walker discovers her own spiritual kinship with that woman.
9. Before Walker found Hurston’s unmarked grave in Florida, she made up her mind to
place a tombstone on the site and to write about the experience.
10. Walker has written many novels, including The Color Purple, which has won the Pulitzer
Prize in 1983.
Exercise 20
Understanding the Compatibility of Tenses
For each sentence below, write the two verbs and identify their tenses. Explain why the
tenses are, or are not, compatible.
1. At first, people picked up food with their hands or stabbed it with a handy knife.
2. A new invention, the fork, became fashionable in Italy around 1100, and English nobles
started using forks by the 1600s.
3. Early forks had only two tines, so food often falls off before reaching the mouth.
4. Proper table manners become a requirement when people dined in public.
5. In the 1890s, one silverware company offered a set of 131 different pieces of tableware,
but most people today considered this to be excessive.
Exercise 21
Using Compatible Tenses in a Paragraph
Write a paragraph of five sentences or more in which you describe how a new invention
(such as the computer or VCR) has changed everyday life. Use sentences containing two
or more verbs that are compatible. Underline these verbs.
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Unit 15 Verb Tenses, Voice, and Mood