Write On!

• Citation: Vol. 38 No. 3 Pg. 64
• Publication year: 2015
• Pages: 64
• Year: 2015

Write On! Vol. 38 No. 3 Pg. 64 Wyoming Bar Journal June, 2015

John H. Ridge, J.D., Ph.D. Deputy City Attorney City of Cheyenne Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Towards an Understanding of Verb Tenses

“If you know how to handle the verbs, you know how to handle the language. Everything else is just vocabulary.” — Michel Thomas

As mentioned in previous articles, verbs have five general properties: person, number, voice, mood, and tense. In the following, we will explore verb tenses.

There are twelve verbs tenses. Most lawyers are familiar with the three simple tenses (simple present, simple past, and simple future) and the three perfect tenses (present perfect, past perfect, and future perfect). But each of these tenses also has a progressive form to it.

The chart below provides an example of each tense form.

The 12 Tenses	Present	Past	Future
Simple	The water company buries its transmission lines.	The water company buried its transmission lines.	The water company will bury its transmission lines.
Simple Progressive	The water company is burying its transmission lines.	The water company was burying its transmission lines.	The water company will be burying its transmission lines.
Perfect	The water company has buried its transmission lines.	The water company had buried its transmission lines.	The water company will have buried its transmission lines.
Perfect Progressive	The water company has been burying its transmission lines.	The water company had been burying its transmission lines.	The water company will have been burying its transmission lines.

The Simple Tenses

The simple tenses are fascinating because they can express action that occurs at a...