We stayed in a bed and breakfast two miles from the kids camp....
The house was victorian.
I'll bet it still is victorian.
You just used the past tense improperly!
Presently Im very tense!
Yep. By the same logic you could argue that since the house will continue to be Victorian as long as it exists, that Joe should have used the future tense.
It’s not even pedantic. “Was” is the preferred tense here, as it refers to a past occurrence (and the current state of the house may be unknown, like Schrodinger’s Cat).
I think Joe wins this round. It reminds me of Heinlein’s Fair Witnesses. Joe can only accurately speak of the style the house had been when he last observed it. The longer it is from that time, the more likely he is to be inaccurate, since a house is not a permanent entity. “Was” is fact; “is” is assumption.
I never did like English grammar!…in my high school, it was crammed into the last two weeks of school in preparation for final exams…ruined those last two weeks when I should have been thinking about summer and not grammar! (I’ve probably already made a mess here with my sentence length and structure, LOL… ;)
JayBluE about 11 years ago
Reminds me of the “Missing Persons” song: “What good are words for, when no one listens anymore… there’s no use talking, at all…..”
Richard Howland-Bolton Premium Member about 11 years ago
Prof danglais is right
The interesting thing about language peevers is that they are almost always demonstrably dead wrong.
Olddog1 about 11 years ago
Until it is torn down or destroyed. Since they are not there, they don’t know if the house is an “is” or a “was.”
Phatts about 11 years ago
and you’d lose that bet, Mom, we burned the house down when they tried to make us pay the billit’s not Victorian now, it’s ashes
Phatts about 11 years ago
Watch out! Watch out!It’s the Spelling Police and the Grammar Gestapo!
pathfinder about 11 years ago
Maybe he used the past ‘imperfect’ tense.
tsandl about 11 years ago
Yep. By the same logic you could argue that since the house will continue to be Victorian as long as it exists, that Joe should have used the future tense.
slcchina about 11 years ago
It’s not even pedantic. “Was” is the preferred tense here, as it refers to a past occurrence (and the current state of the house may be unknown, like Schrodinger’s Cat).
sbchamp about 11 years ago
“Youse can dangle…”
sbchamp about 11 years ago
I don’t bug peeps ’bout they grammar, I just let ’em look like morans. Spelling, howevar…
sbchamp about 11 years ago
G.I.s bivouac:In Tents…
RussHeim about 11 years ago
Y’all will have to excuse me for not paying attention. I was dangling my participle.
Dani Rice about 11 years ago
I swear Joe’s mom is my mother reincarnated. The woman drove me nuts – and the worst of it is, I’m becoming just the way she was!
unca jim about 11 years ago
Reminds me of the old joke about the woman on her first visit to Boston and asked the taxi driver to take her somewhere where she could get scrod.
IQTech61 about 11 years ago
Yes, and their children will pick out their nursing home so they might want to be careful of the example they set.
Solitha Premium Member about 11 years ago
I think Joe wins this round. It reminds me of Heinlein’s Fair Witnesses. Joe can only accurately speak of the style the house had been when he last observed it. The longer it is from that time, the more likely he is to be inaccurate, since a house is not a permanent entity. “Was” is fact; “is” is assumption.
Dave Thompson Premium Member about 11 years ago
Kudos to solitha for invoking the Fair Witness example.
ORMouseworks about 11 years ago
I never did like English grammar!…in my high school, it was crammed into the last two weeks of school in preparation for final exams…ruined those last two weeks when I should have been thinking about summer and not grammar! (I’ve probably already made a mess here with my sentence length and structure, LOL… ;)
Purple-Stater Premium Member about 11 years ago
People trivializing the Nazi atrocities, by comparing them to people with an education, bother me a lot more than poor grammar.
tegm about 11 years ago
This is like every time I say “My first boyfriend was Japanese,” and then I think, “well, he probably still is…”