The JCF Grammar Hotline

This has been bothering me......the word 'had'.

All my references describe 'had' as being part of the past perfect where the 'had' expresses some action in the past completed before some other event. But how would you evaluate the use of 'had' in the following sentences?


"She had come for him."

"He had seen it before."

"She had to have it."

"He had never felt anything like it before."

"They had both tensed when they felt it."


The last one bugs me because technically they felt it before they tensed, but "They both tensed when they had felt it." doesn't sound right. Which verb gets the 'had' when they're going on in the past at the same time?

 

I'm not an "expert" but I'm pretty good at using the tenses accurately, as long as I don't have to explain them.

If they "had felt it" and then tensed, why not say: They had both felt it; they tensed. Or: They had both tensed as soon as they felt it (or "had felt it" - see, I'm no expert). I would have to see the sentence in context.

Responding to some earlier posts on this page, especially regarding "caps" I follow the rule in the 'ol dictionary. It's the State of Washington, but Washington state (go Cougs!). It's President Bush, but the president of the country. Now, George Bush, who is president of the United States....

Personifications like "Beauty" takes caps. I think of the Force as "the Force" rather than "a force" so I put caps on it.

Padawan/padawan and Master/master: as title or its use as a pronoun - cap it. "Hey, Obi-Wan," can be "Hey, Master." Master is substituting for a proper name.

There's a lot of masters and padawans in the Temple. Just like there be elephants, except there be none (getting silly, aren't I?).

But when I'm speaking to a master, say Master Windu, I cap the second use of the word "master" because it is Mace's title.

I know this doesn't agree with a lot of the SW books, especially JA, but I do base this on rules, to wit (source: Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary)"The names of persons and places, of organizations and their members, of congress and council, and of historical periods and events are capitalized," as are "words designating peoples and languages."

Also, of "words of family relationships preceding the name of a person" or "titles preceding the name of a person and epithets used instead of a name."

 

Okay, the first, second, and fourth examples are all pretty standard past perfect.

In the third, "had" is the plain old past tense of "have," as part of the construction "have to." In this case, you could substitute "needed" for "had" -- "She needed to have it" -- and see that way that you aren't actually using "had" as a tense marker.

In the fifth, it depends on what you want to emphasize. As it stands, "when they felt it" is an adverbial phrase modifying the verb "had tensed," and the form of the verb in the adverbial phrase is in relation to the main verb. You can actually get some moderately subtle shades of meaning by varying which verb you put in the past perfect. For the following examples, assume that you are writing in past tense overall. If you're writing in present tense, everything sort of moves back one.

"They both tensed when they felt it."
--They both tense up "now" with respect to the story -- that is, in the running timeframe that you're describing in past tense. The tensing is pretty much at the same time as the feeling, although there's a distinct implication that the tensing is in response to the feeling, so it's technically (as you say) slightly afterward.
Sub-example: "They looked at each other. They both tensed when they felt it." Whatever they're tensing up about, it's after they start looking at each other.

"They both tensed when they had felt it."
--They tense up "now" with respect to the story again, but there's a bit of extra emphasis on their tensing up after feeling it -- you're saying that they completed the action of feeling it and then proceeded to tense up.

"They had both tensed when they felt it."
--Here, you're setting the action of tensing one level further back into the past, but the relationship between tensing and feeling is pretty much feel-->immediate tensing.
Sub-example: "They looked at each other. They had both tensed when they felt it." This indicates that they tensed up before they looked at each other, but you're mentioning it afterward.
Alternately, this could mean that they had already tensed up by the time they felt it, though I don't find this as natural a reading. Probably depends on context, but if you want to avoid the ambiguity, be aware of it.

"They had both tensed when they had felt it."
--I think you get the idea by now. Occurs a step back in time with respect to the narrative, but also indicates that the feeling was completed before they tensed up. This could also be used to get rid of the ambiguity from the previous example, but you still get the implication of the feeling being complete (processed?) before the tensing starts.

 

Thanks much for the replies! That does help a lot.

Now here is a more specific question about what has really been bothering me about past perfect tenses. This one is past perfect tense.

"She had come for him."

But for past perfect tense, doesn't there need to be a relationship between two events? This sentence is just one thing, with no reference to anything else happening. Would it be incorrect if there were no references to other things happening in the sentences next to it?


About capitalization......in my fics I use 'Master' and 'Padawan' since that is what is used in the JA/JQ/LotJ books. But for talking about 'master' and 'padawan' I use the un-captialized words.

Here's an interesting bit of info......the secretaries where I work recently went to a business writing class and one of them told me that capitalizing non-specific title is accepted now. For example, if I wrote, "The Captain will cut the ribbon." it would be OK, even if it wasn't stated who 'The Captain' was. Apparently that's relatively new in English grammar.

Hmmmm, there be Elephants in the Jedi Temple?

 

Actually, I don't think there's anything to prevent you from writing an entire scene or story in past perfect as opposed to past or present (or even future), except that with all the helping verbs it would probably be hard to do gracefully. Also, you might find you want that extra layer of past. Technically, though I was focusing a lot on the relationship of the two verb clauses, I believe the point of past perfect is that by some point in the past, the action was already completed.

So... it wouldn't be wrong, but possibly a little weird.

 

Intriguing. The references I have talk about using past perfect only to distinguish when different actions are completed. But they don't say that you can't actually use all past perfect either and I know that there are sentences that use only past perfect tenses. Hnnn, I suppose that using all past perfect is just considered undesirable as opposed to being not allowed.

If I were writing a short, depressing flashback then all past perfect might work very well, but I don't have any plans for that in any of my current plot bunnies. Thanks!

 

ardavenport, thank you for asking this wonderful question! Now the oh-so-confusing tenses have become a bit clearer to me.

On a completely different topic, could someone explain what is the difference between 'even if' and 'even though'?

And 'as if' and 'as though'?

I'm always confusing those two/four.

Thanks so much in advance.

 

CrazyAni, "if" implies that it hasn't happened, and "though" implies that it has. Like you'd say, "Even if I had sent the message" to mean that you haven't done it yet (or aren't going to), and "Even though I had sent the message" to mean that you did. Same thing with "as if" and "as though".

I don't have any questions myself, but I do offer a resource--over my years reading fanfiction, I've noticed that errors in dialogue formatting are some of the most common mistakes made in writing fiction. This annoyed me, so I wrote a long tutorial explaining the proper way to format dialogue, and it was accepted as an article in the Archive over a year ago. If you have trouble with dialogue, feel free to read it--Dialogue Formatting 101.

 

Rynne, thank you so much for the explanation and for the formatting! It was extremely helpful.

And ages ago someone asked which spelling was correct - lightsabre or lightsaber. The former is British, and the latter is American version. Officially, both are correct. Inoficcialy, it depends on the continent....

 

This is one awesome thread. Methinks I'll bookmark it because it's really helping me on the finer points of English grammar.

 

I have a question about contractions -- won't, can't, haven't, etc. Is there any grammatical reason for avoiding them in a narrative? For dialog, that depends on the speaker, but is will not, cannot, have not, etc. better than using the contractions in descriptive writing?

 

In technical writing it is generally considered "better" to avoid contractions. However, in creative writing it is really a matter of preference. Just consider the sentence structure and flow when choosing.

 

What Bale said. Also, I like using contractions in my stories because they generally improve the flow of a narrative. They present less syllables for the reader's mind to hang up on. But using 'will not', 'could not', etc. can be a great tool for putting emphasis on certain sentences. (To quote Gandalf the Grey: "You cannot pass!") It really is a matter of personal taste though, IMO, except that excessive use of "non-contractions" especially in dialogue can start to feel forced and unwieldy. Unless, of course, the character is supposed to talk that way.

 

The above two are correct It can help the narrative better to ues them, but if you're handing in a term paper or something, yo'll be counted off for using them.

 

This has bothered me for a while.

Lightsaber: If you're English, do you call it a Lightsabre?

 

I think that in-universe terms should be spelled the way they are in the canon, which means that in bookverse stories, "lightsaber" is correct while "lightsabre" is incorrect. For strictly movieverse stories that involve no written EU whatsoever, a case could be made for both spellings, but I'd still think "lightsaber" is the better spelling.

 

I always correct it when I beta, even though I leave other British/Canadian/Australian spellings alone.

 

I find that terribly confusing. If it's grammatically correct, then it doesn't seem to right to be marked down for it. OTOH, I suppose that they are unacceptable for formal, non-fiction writing. Thanks for the comments on this everyone!

 

I need a little grammar help on something that's always tripped me up.

When are group words like "team," "Council," etc. considered plural (followed by the plural form of a verb) and when are they singular (followed by a singular form of a verb)? In RotS, Palpatine tells Anakin that "the Jedi Council want control of the Republic" and I remember that sounding so wrong to my ears. I thought it should be wants, not want, though obviously the movie was right as I've encountered the same sort of thing in countless books too.

Does anyone know the rule on this? I remember studying it in 7th grade English, but that was quite a while ago.

 

Such words are known as collective nouns. They can be followed by a singular or plural verb. Generally, a singular verb is used when the persons or things that make up the group, council, etc. are considered collectively, e.g.

The committee has reached a consensus.


Plural verbs, then, are generally used when the persons or things that make up the collective are considered individually, e.g.

The group were divided in their sympathies.


I for one, tend to agree that using plural verbs in such circumstances makes the sentences sound awkward. However, it's amazing what a difference in meaning such a nuance can create.

Hope this helps.

 

That helped a lot, Bale. Thanks!

 

IMO for something like that, it's better to go with want sounds right. The English teacher will point it out to you, but your other 99 out of 100 readers won't notice if it's incorrect since it looks/sounds correct.

 

Nat, you're right. If it's a colloquialism of English that people normally use but is actually grammatically incorrect, it's ok. only grammar geeks notice.