A tense shows when an action happens. Choosing the right tense helps your reader follow the time of events.
Simple tenses
- Simple present: habits and facts. “She goes to school every day.”
- Simple past: finished actions. “She went to school yesterday.”
- Simple future: actions to come. “She will go to school tomorrow.”
Past continuous
Use was / were + verb-ing for an action in progress in the past: “They were cooking dinner when I arrived.”
Present perfect
Use have / has + past participle for something that happened at an unspecified time or that connects the past with now: “I have finished my homework.”
Watch out for irregular verbs
Many common verbs do not add -ed: go, went, gone; eat, ate, eaten; write, wrote, written.