sequence of tenses
Britishnoun
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Ever the English professor, he was careful about the sequence of tenses.
From New York Times ● Jul. 22, 2013
Resnais, a past master of cinematic sleight of hand, has often taken a story and stylized it, juxtaposed images, shuffled the sequence of tenses.
From Time Magazine Archive
We now see that the past tense has a third meaning in English: a backshifted event in a sequence of tenses.
From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker
A writer also has to harmonize the tenses according to a scheme called sequence of tenses, tense agreement, or backshift.
From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker
The two editions 'agree in the sequence of tenses, with a few exceptions also in the sequence of speeches, and on the whole even in the sequence of lines.
From Early Plays — Catiline, the Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans by Orbeck, Anders
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
