Kenneth G. Wilson (1923–). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993.
SEQUENCE OF TENSES
Editors and schoolteachers alike have corrected hundreds of thousands of sentences for failure of the tense of the verb in the main clause to govern the tenses of the verbs in subsequent clauses: for example, I thought yesterday that he went home to Chicago should be I thought yesterday that he had gone home to Chicago. In His secretary announced this morning that the senator was going to Chicago tomorrow, should we leave that second verb as was going or instead should common sense govern the tense of that verb, so that the sentence reads She announced this morning that the senator is going tomorrow or that he will go tomorrow or that he would go tomorrow? Each of these handles sequence of tense differently from the others. Common sense is a good guide in such matters, and perhaps the key bit of advice is: don’t jerk your reader about unnecessarily. Shift tenses only when it seems necessary to do so, especially when you are telling a story. Keep events in order, so that the reader knows what happened first and what happened next. And if one thing happened prior to another event in the past, make certain that those times are clear. Finally, remember that there is nothing wrong with sometimes telling your story in the historical present tense, so long as that breathless sense of immediacy is what you wish to communicate: He swings and misses! He’s the third out, and that’s the ballgame!
