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Summaries of the narratives (plots) of works of fiction are conventionally presented using the present tense, rather than the past tense. At any particular point of the story, as it unfolds, there is a now and so a past and a future, so whether some event mentioned in the story is past, present, or future, changes as the story progresses.
Present tense can also be used to narrate events in the reader's past. This is known as "historical present". [22] This tense is more common in spontaneous conversational narratives than in written literature, though it is sometimes used in literature to give a sense of immediacy of the actions. Screenplay action is also written in the present ...
A number of multi-word constructions exist to express the combinations of present tense with the basic form of the present tense is called the simple present; there are also constructions known as the present progressive (or present continuous) (e.g. am writing), the present perfect (e.g. have written), and the present perfect progressive (e.g ...
The present tense used in the condition clause may take the form of the simple present as in the above examples, or the present progressive, present perfect or present perfect progressive as appropriate (according to general principles for uses of English verb forms): If he is sleeping when we arrive, we shan't wake him. (present progressive)
Also apophthegm. A terse, pithy saying, akin to a proverb, maxim, or aphorism. aposiopesis A rhetorical device in which speech is broken off abruptly and the sentence is left unfinished. apostrophe A figure of speech in which a speaker breaks off from addressing the audience (e.g., in a play) and directs speech to a third party such as an opposing litigant or some other individual, sometimes ...
The use of tenses is quite similar to English: In implicative conditional sentences, the present tense (or other appropriate tense, mood, etc.) is used in both clauses. In predictive conditional sentences, the future tense or imperative generally appears in the main clause, but the condition clause is formed with the present tense (as in English).
Bios of dead persons are to be written in the past tense as per the MOS. However, when referring to the dead person's works (literature, art, philosophy) the MOS does not permit anything to be written in the present tense, yet most articles (see Aristotle and John Calvin) include references to their writings in the present tense. I was going to ...
In the indicative, there are five one-word forms conjugated for person and number: one for the present tense (which can indicate progressive or non-progressive aspect); one for the perfective aspect of the past; one for the imperfective aspect of the past; a form for the pluperfect aspect that is only used in formal writing; [19]: pp. 57–58 ...