Kirk Mahoney . com

I heard someone say this yesterday during a conference call.

Problem:
The continuous inflection of the present tense is unnecessary in this statement.

Explanation:
The label “present continuous” refers to a continuous inflection of the present tense.

(Quote) “are wanting” (unquote) is an example of the “present continuous” form of the verb “want”.

As explained at Wikipedia, the “present continuous” form is prevalently used in English to express current action but is rare or absent in other Indo-European languages.

There are at least two hypotheses about why American English speakers often choose the “present continuous” form of a verb over the “present simple” form:

• One hypothesis is that saying something like (quote) “They are wanting …” (unquote) sounds more educated to the speaker than saying simply (quote) “They want …” (unquote). One might even label this as a linguistic hypercorrection.
• Another hypothesis is that using the “present continuous” form instead of the “present simple” form effectively softens the impact on the listener or reader.

No matter which hypothesis you prefer, the “present continuous” form is often unnecessary and tends to interfere with clear, direct communication.

Solution:
“They want a response by January 31st.”

I saw this today in a Vonage commercial.

Problem:
The adverb does not match the tense of the verb.

Explanation:
The adverb “yet” means at the present time.

The expression “didn’t leave” is in the past tense, so “yet” does not go with “didn’t leave” (or any other expression in the past tense).

In other words, it makes no sense to say, “Hope you didn’t leave at the present time.”

To fix this, one must change the expression to the present tense.

Solution:
“Hope you have not left yet.”

I heard this yesterday on a radio show.

Problem:
The adverb does not match the tense of the verb.

Explanation:
The adverb “yet” means at the present time.

The expression “did not call” is in the past tense, so “yet” does not go with “did not call” (or any other expression in the past tense).

In other words, it makes no sense to say, “He did not call back at the present time.”

To fix this, one must change the expression to the present tense.

Solution:
“He has not called back yet.”

I saw this in a technical presentation. (Ouch!)

Problem:
The wrong verb form is used in this sentence.

Explanation:
The Purdue University Online Writing Lab has an examples page about verb tenses and voices. A thorough discussion of English verbs appears at Wikipedia.

The sentence that I saw in the presentation was meant to be in the simple future tense and in passive voice.

We can confirm that the correct verb form is “run” — not “ran” — for this sentence by consulting Wikipedia’s set of conjugation tables for the English language’s model regular verbs and for some of its most common irregular verbs.

Another handy tool for several thousand English verbs is the verb-conjugations tool that is located here. The “Scientific Psychic” (SP) website where this tool is located is a bit quirky, but the tool seems to work well. You might like the Verbix tool instead; although it’s much pickier than the SP tool about input, its output is more thorough than SP’s output.

Here is an unorthodox but still fairly reliable method to determine which of “will be ran” or “will be run” is the correct form: search Google separately for each of “will be ran” and “will be run” with the quotation marks included in each search; the one with the dominant number of hits or matches is very likely the correct form (unless the language has fallen apart on the Web!).

For example, I just searched Google for “will be ran” and got about 31,400 matches; I searched for “will be run” and got about 568,000 matches. The 18:1 dominance of “will be run” over “will be ran” is a very good indicator that “will be run” is the correct form.

Unfortunately, this method also can depress you. Finding 31,400 matches for “will be ran” is depressing, especially when the top matches are from governmental entitities such as the State of Michigan, the University of Idaho, a high school in Iowa, a school district in North Carolina, and a commission of fire protection in Kentucky. That’s the price that you pay for an unorthodox method, I suppose.

If seeing Google return 31,400 matches for “will be ran” raises your fear for the future of our country’s literacy, then I recommend that you consider making a donation to First Book, about which I have written an article.

Solution:
“The following tests will be run.”