13.3 Verb Tenses and Agreement

Verb Tense Usage

Verb tenses tell your reader when something happens, and subject-verb agreement makes sure your sentences hold together grammatically. English has 12 verb tenses, built by combining three time frames (past, present, future) with four aspects (simple, perfect, progressive, perfect progressive). Getting comfortable with all 12, plus the agreement rules, will sharpen both your writing and your editing.

Simple, Perfect, and Progressive Tenses

Every English verb tense combines a time frame with an aspect. Here's how the first three aspects work:

Simple tenses describe facts, habits, and one-time events.

• Present: She talks (habit or fact)
• Past: She talked (completed action)
• Future: She will talk (upcoming event)

Perfect tenses describe actions completed by a certain point in time. They're built with a form of "have" + the past participle.

• Present perfect: She has talked (started in the past, relevant now)
• Past perfect: She had talked (completed before another past event)
• Future perfect: She will have talked (will be completed before a future point)

Progressive tenses describe actions that are ongoing. They're built with a form of "be" + the present participle (-ing form).

• Present progressive: She is talking (happening right now)
• Past progressive: She was talking (was in progress at a past moment)
• Future progressive: She will be talking (will be in progress at a future moment)

Perfect Progressive Tenses

These combine the perfect and progressive aspects to emphasize the duration of an ongoing action up to a specific point. They're built with a form of "have been" + the present participle.

• Present perfect progressive: She has been talking for an hour. (started in the past, still going)
• Past perfect progressive: She had been talking for an hour before the bell rang. (was ongoing up to a past moment)
• Future perfect progressive: She will have been talking for an hour by the time we arrive. (will be ongoing up to a future moment)

The key difference from regular perfect tenses: perfect progressive stresses how long the action has been happening, not just that it's complete. Compare She has written three essays (perfect: focuses on the completed result) with She has been writing for two hours (perfect progressive: focuses on the duration).

Subject-Verb Agreement

Basic Agreement Rules

The core rule is straightforward: singular subjects take singular verbs, and plural subjects take plural verbs.

• Singular: The dog barks.
• Plural: The dogs bark.

A quick note that can be counterintuitive: with regular verbs in the present tense, the singular form is the one that ends in -s (barks), while the plural form drops it (bark). This is the opposite of how nouns work, and it trips people up more often than you'd expect.

For compound subjects, the conjunction matters:

• Joined by "and" → usually plural: Tom and Jerry are friends.
• Joined by "or" or "nor" → the verb agrees with the subject closest to it: Either the cat or the dogs are responsible. / Either the dogs or the cat is responsible.

Notice how the verb changes depending on which subject sits next to it. This is one of the most commonly tested rules.

Special Cases

Collective nouns (team, jury, committee) can go either way. If the group acts as one unit, use a singular verb. If members act individually, use a plural verb.

• The team is practicing today. (acting as a unit)
• The team are discussing their individual roles. (acting separately)

In American English, the singular form is almost always preferred for collective nouns. You'll encounter the plural form more in British English.

Indefinite pronouns like everyone, anybody, each, and nobody are almost always singular.

• Everyone is required to submit the assignment by Friday.

A few indefinite pronouns (some, all, none, most) depend on what they refer to: Some of the cake is gone (singular, because "cake" is uncountable) vs. Some of the students are absent (plural, because "students" is countable).

Intervening phrases between the subject and verb don't change agreement. Ignore the phrase and match the verb to the actual subject.

• The box of cookies is on the table. ("Box" is the subject, not "cookies.")
• The car that belongs to my parents is red. ("Car" is the subject.)

Common Verb Errors

Tense Shifts and Irregular Verbs

Unnecessary tense shifts are one of the most frequent writing mistakes. If you start a passage in past tense, stay in past tense unless you have a clear reason to switch.

• Incorrect: She walked to the store and buys a gallon of milk.
• Correct: She walked to the store and bought a gallon of milk.

Irregular verbs don't follow the standard -ed pattern, so their past tense and past participle forms need to be memorized. Here are some commonly confused ones (formatted as base → past → past participle):

• bring → brought → brought (not "brang" or "brung")
• swim → swam → swum (not "swimmed")
• lie → lay → lain (to recline; not "lied," which is the past tense of lie meaning to tell an untruth)
• lay → laid → laid (to place something down; often confused with lie)
• go → went → gone (not "went" as the participle: She has gone, not She has went)

The lie/lay pair deserves extra attention. Lie means to recline and doesn't take a direct object (I lie down). Lay means to place something and requires a direct object (I lay the book on the table). The confusion gets worse because the past tense of lie is lay, which looks identical to the present tense of lay.

Subject-Verb Agreement Errors

These errors usually happen when something separates the subject from the verb, making it hard to spot the true subject.

• Incorrect: The colors of the rainbow is beautiful.
• Correct: The colors of the rainbow are beautiful. ("Colors" is the subject.)

Watch for "or/nor" constructions where the verb must match the nearest subject:

• Incorrect: Neither the students nor the teacher are present.
• Correct: Neither the students nor the teacher is present. ("Teacher" is closest.)

Indefinite pronouns trip people up because they sound plural but are grammatically singular:

• Incorrect: Each of the runners have trained hard.
• Correct: Each of the runners has trained hard. ("Each" is the subject, and it's singular.)

Consistent Verb Tense

Establishing and Maintaining Tense

Pick a primary tense for your writing and stick with it. Here are the most common choices:

• Simple present for facts, generalizations, and recurring events: The Earth revolves around the Sun.
• Simple past for narratives and completed actions: I visited my grandparents last weekend.
• Present perfect for actions that started in the past and still matter now: I have lived in this city for five years.

Consistency doesn't mean you can never change tenses. It means every shift should be intentional and justified by a change in time frame.

Shifting Tenses

A tense shift is appropriate when the time frame genuinely changes. The past progressive paired with simple past, for example, shows one action interrupted by another:

• I was studying when my friend called me.

In narrative writing, maintain consistent tense within each scene. Use transitions or context clues to signal shifts:

Notice how this passage stays in simple past for the main action but shifts to past perfect ("had been," "had cleaned") to reference an even earlier time. That shift is logical because it points further back in time.

When you're editing your own work, read through specifically looking for tense. If you spot a shift, ask yourself: Did the time frame actually change here? If the answer is no, fix the verb to match your primary tense.