# It might be correct but it drives me batshit! (bitching about past tense)
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-might-be-correct-but-it-drives-me-batshit-bitching-about-past-tense/391752
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [February 11, 2007, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-might-be-correct-but-it-drives-me-batshit-bitching-about-past-tense/391752 "2007-02-11T19:13:16Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)
#### Post date: [February 11, 2007, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-might-be-correct-but-it-drives-me-batshit-bitching-about-past-tense/391752/1 "2007-02-11T19:13:16Z")
I started reading Fool’s Errand by Robin Hobb last night. Or maybe it should be “I had started reading Fool’s Errand by Robin Hobb last night.”
Does it matter?
On the second page, she’s describing something that happened a month earlier. On this one page, I counted 23 uses of “had” (denoting tense, not possession).
It’s a small word. It’s a necessary word. But seeing it 23 times in just a few paragraphs bugged the hell out of me and I stopped reading.
If I had to use one word that frequently in such a short time, I’d restructure those paragraphs.
I knew that what she was writing about happened in the recent past. She could have switched from past perfect to simple past without confusing the reader. Who’s she writing for? Grammar teachers?
Substituting “was” for a few of those “hads” – why couldn’t she do that? Or why couldn’t she have done that? Does it matter that much?
Is mixing tenses a cardinal sin?
Does seeing the same word used repeatedly in a short time bug you too?
---
### Author:  [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)
#### Post date: [February 11, 2007, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-might-be-correct-but-it-drives-me-batshit-bitching-about-past-tense/391752/2 "2007-02-11T19:30:24Z")
No.
Is using correct English a sin?
---
### Author:  [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)
#### Post date: [February 11, 2007, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-might-be-correct-but-it-drives-me-batshit-bitching-about-past-tense/391752/3 "2007-02-11T20:09:08Z")
[QUOTE=AuntiePam]
I started reading Fool’s Errand by Robin Hobb last night. Or maybe it should be “I had started reading Fool’s Errand by Robin Hobb last night.”
Does it matter?
[/quote]
As far as I can tell, the correct way to say what you want to say here does not have the word “had” in it.
My understanding about the “had” you’re talking about here is that it is used when you are describing an event which occured in the past relative to the past event which is the topic of your discourse. So: “John went to the store. A few minutes before, he had run out of milk.” Or “Even before she had finished her sentence, her mother had begun to interrupt her.” In each case, the topic action of the discourse occured in the past, hence past tense, and yet also something was being discussed which occured _before_ the topical event, and the description of _that other_ event is in this “had” tense. (Is it called past pluperfect?)
A sentence which gets across what you’re trying to communicate, but which does need the “had,” would be, “I had begun reading this book last night, when I soon noticed that the author used ‘had’ 33 times in a single paragraph” or something like that. Not good style, though.
> [@](#):
>
> On the second page, she’s describing something that happened a month earlier. On this one page, I counted 23 uses of “had” (denoting tense, not possession).
>
> It’s a small word. It’s a necessary word. But seeing it 23 times in just a few paragraphs bugged the hell out of me and I stopped reading.
>
> If I had to use one word that frequently in such a short time, I’d restructure those paragraphs.
>
> I knew that what she was writing about happened in the recent past. She could have switched from past perfect to simple past without confusing the reader. Who’s she writing for? Grammar teachers?
>
> Substituting “was” for a few of those “hads” – why couldn’t she do that? Or why couldn’t she have done that? Does it matter that much?
>
> Is mixing tenses a cardinal sin?
>
> Does seeing the same word used repeatedly in a short time bug you too?
I’d have to see some excerpts. But I can see ways to get around it:
“Jane did X. She was trying to accomplish Y. This was because, a month earlier, Z had occured. Jane had been in need of W when a friend had taken the last V. At the moment her friend took that V, Jane realized she had to do Y. She began to make plans for this act. And so, as she was doing X, she thought about U.”
Did you see what I did there?
-FrL-
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### Author:  [@Stratocaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stratocaster)
#### Post date: [February 11, 2007, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-might-be-correct-but-it-drives-me-batshit-bitching-about-past-tense/391752/4 "2007-02-11T20:18:08Z")
I’ve seen great writers dispense with the convention to make their prose smoother, so from their perspectives a long string of hyper-correct grammar could be clunky and should be avoided when it is. But great writers often play by different rules.
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### Author:  [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)
#### Post date: [February 11, 2007, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-might-be-correct-but-it-drives-me-batshit-bitching-about-past-tense/391752/5 "2007-02-11T20:20:01Z")
By the way, if you liked the passage you’re talking about, you’ll love:
John, where Mary had had “had ‘had had,’” had had “had had ‘had had.’” “Had had ‘had had’” had had more votes as the correct usage.
-FrL-
(I think I learned an even longer string of hads once, but I’ve forgotten it.)
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### Author:  [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)
#### Post date: [February 11, 2007, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-might-be-correct-but-it-drives-me-batshit-bitching-about-past-tense/391752/6 "2007-02-11T21:07:05Z")
[QUOTE=Frylock]
I’d have to see some excerpts.
[/quote]
[Here](http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0553801481/ref=sib_dp_pt/104-6592342-5631928#reader-link) it is – page 2.
Sometimes being correct gets in the way of smooth communication. Not as often as being **in** correct, granted. 🙂
I read a lot. I’ve probably read a lot of passages where the wrong tense was used, but because the result was smooth and flowing, I didn’t notice.
I don’t notice the hads when they’re abbreviated – I’d, she’d, he’d, it’d – but abbreviation seems to occur most often in dialogue or when the book is in first person.
Maybe it bugs me because my stupidity about tenses means that I’m getting them wrong and everybody’s laughing at me.
---
### Author:  [@Savannah](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Savannah)
#### Post date: [February 11, 2007, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-might-be-correct-but-it-drives-me-batshit-bitching-about-past-tense/391752/7 "2007-02-11T22:03:06Z")
I’ve had (er…) editors strike out some _had_s from my prose to make it smoother. I do agree that noticing the _way_ a writer writes can jolt a reader out of the story. It’s happened to me. I began to read one novel where the author couldn’t or wouldn’t break paragraphs. There were so many perfect places to start a new paragraph, and he didn’t, creating huge blocks of text. It bugged me so much that I never read the book.
I also tossed one aside where the writer refused to just write “he said”. It was: “he quipped blah”, “he muttered angrily blah”, “he replied jokingly blah”, “he snarled blah”. Or maybe it was, “blah,” he snarled, “blah”, he joked, “blah”, he muttered, and “blah,” he whispered, and so on and on and on.
I read once that dialogue tags that are a simple “he said” or “she said” almost pass invisibly to the reader, whereas if you’re trying to convey how a character speaks by telling them each time, it’s not as effective. I agree.
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### Author:  [@KJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KJ)
#### Post date: [February 11, 2007, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-might-be-correct-but-it-drives-me-batshit-bitching-about-past-tense/391752/8 "2007-02-11T22:14:45Z")
Aw, Frylock beat me to it.
[sub]Who polices the police? Police police. But who polices the police police? Police police police police police police.[/sub]
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### Author:  [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)
#### Post date: [February 11, 2007, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-might-be-correct-but-it-drives-me-batshit-bitching-about-past-tense/391752/9 "2007-02-11T22:31:24Z")
[QUOTE=Savannah]
I read once that dialogue tags that are a simple “he said” or “she said” almost pass invisibly to the reader, whereas if you’re trying to convey how a character speaks by telling them each time, it’s not as effective. I agree.
[/QUOTE]
J.K. Rowling is guilty of this. I counted (there I go counting again) 13 dialogue tags on one page of Phoenix. I hate dialogue tags.
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### Author:  [@Scissorjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scissorjack)
#### Post date: [February 11, 2007, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-might-be-correct-but-it-drives-me-batshit-bitching-about-past-tense/391752/10 "2007-02-11T22:37:55Z")
Man and and and and and boy.
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2007, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-might-be-correct-but-it-drives-me-batshit-bitching-about-past-tense/391752/11 "2007-02-12T02:47:47Z")
[QUOTE=AuntiePam]
Maybe it bugs me because my stupidity about tenses means that I’m getting them wrong and everybody’s laughing at me.
[/QUOTE]
Probably.
You are for sure getting them wrong, at least. I can’t tell who else is laughing.
However, you’re not reading that page very closely if you think the tenses are wrong or even if you think she is overusing the "had"s. She’s making a careful distinction between her present day thoughts and her thoughts - and her and others’ actions - on more than one separate day in the past. You can see where she switches out of absolute necessity in the last paragraph, starting with “I had enjoyed…” I see maybe one “had” that I would have taken out (and it’s in the previous paragraph), but since it clearly is in line with the rest of the passage I can see why she let it stay.
She’s doing something complicated in those paragraphs, and she wants you to slow down and carefully note what lies in her past and how it differs from her present. If you aren’t following it, then you may just be used to simpler authors who simplify their scenes to suit their readers. This is a reality of genre fiction, and is the norm for most quick reads (or I as call them, “popcorn novels.”) That’s not what Hobb is doing, so it may just be that she’s not the author for you. If not, it’s no big deal. I don’t like her style of fantasy either. But I do see why she wrote it the way she did.
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### Author:  [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2007, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-might-be-correct-but-it-drives-me-batshit-bitching-about-past-tense/391752/12 "2007-02-12T02:53:55Z")
[QUOTE=Exapno Mapcase]
Probably.
You are for sure getting them wrong, at least. I can’t tell who else is laughing.
[/quote]
As noted in the title of the OP, she believes the text linked to uses “had” correctly.
So this:
> [@Exapno Mapcase](#):
>
> However, you’re not reading that page very closely if you think the tenses are wrong
misses the mark.
-FrL-
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### Author:  [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2007, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-might-be-correct-but-it-drives-me-batshit-bitching-about-past-tense/391752/13 "2007-02-12T03:00:48Z")
[QUOTE=Exapno Mapcase]
She’s doing something complicated in those paragraphs, and she wants you to slow down and carefully note what lies in her past and how it differs from her present. If you aren’t following it,
[/quote]
Nothing in the OP indicates that she “isn’t following it.” In fact she explicitly states the opposite.
Okay, I just gotta say it. Here you’ve chided the OP for not being up to the task of careful reading, but… what kind of treatment have you apparently given the text of the OP itself…? :dubious: :smack:
-FrL
---
### Author:  [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2007, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-might-be-correct-but-it-drives-me-batshit-bitching-about-past-tense/391752/14 "2007-02-12T03:43:47Z")
What **Frylock** said. I have no doubt that Hobb used the proper tenses. Hey, she’s a successful writer, she knows how it’s done. But I think the result here was several clunky paragraphs. The hads slowed me down. I don’t want to be slowed down by hads. Slow me down with lyricism or metaphor or astute observation.
I can’t think of many authors who are simpler to read than Hobb. In these paragraphs, she’s telling us that Fitz is examining his life and his relationship with his son, that he’s worried, a bit lonely, and there’s a hint that his life is about to change. He’s apprehensive, and maybe a bit excited as well.
I like Hobb, but she can be repetitive and meandering. If you need to use had 23 times two or three paragraphs to get your point across, maybe a rewrite is in order.
Is all I’m sayin’.
I appreciate the input. I’ll try not to let it bother me in the future. But it probably will. I admit I can be irrational about some things.
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### Author:  [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2007, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-might-be-correct-but-it-drives-me-batshit-bitching-about-past-tense/391752/15 "2007-02-12T04:04:13Z")
Fitz is recounting events in the last book, to catch us up. It’s the way Robin Hobb always writes her novels. There’s probably no better way to do it when writing in first person, while keeping it in the particular prosaic style of the “era” it’s set in.
---
### Author:  [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2007, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-might-be-correct-but-it-drives-me-batshit-bitching-about-past-tense/391752/16 "2007-02-12T04:29:51Z")
[QUOTE=AuntiePam]
What **Frylock** said. I have no doubt that Hobb used the proper tenses. Hey, she’s a successful writer, she knows how it’s done. But I think the result here was several clunky paragraphs. The hads slowed me down. I don’t want to be slowed down by hads. Slow me down with lyricism or metaphor or astute observation.
[/QUOTE]
FWIW the passage you linked looked like awfully clunky prose to me as well. But I notice that many of the 108 reader reviews at [amazon.com](http://amazon.com) praise her prose style. So I guess I’ll chalk it up to “I’ve only read a couple of paragraphs” plus “maybe I just haven’t learned how to appreciate her style.” Still: Clunky.
-FrL-
---
### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2007, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-might-be-correct-but-it-drives-me-batshit-bitching-about-past-tense/391752/17 "2007-02-12T05:11:57Z")
[QUOTE=AuntiePam]
I can’t think of many authors who are simpler to read than Hobb.
[/QUOTE]
Odd. I can think of dozens, if not hundreds, probably including every single author on the fiction bestseller list for any genre for the past several decades.
> [@](#):
>
> I like Hobb, but she can be repetitive and meandering. If you need to use had 23 times two or three paragraphs to get your point across, maybe a rewrite is in order.
Maybe. Or maybe you just need to choose a different book. If I didn’t like page two of a book I’d find something else to read, or maybe come back to it much, much later. Some books are like that.
Or maybe she used that style deliberately, to sort out those who would like reading it for an entire book and those who would not.
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### Author:  [@panamajack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panamajack)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2007, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-might-be-correct-but-it-drives-me-batshit-bitching-about-past-tense/391752/18 "2007-02-12T05:32:48Z")
It could also be the author’s apparent aversion to contractions - which I guess is probably supposed to be the character’s. With a few "I’d"s in there, it might have been less noticeable to you. I noticed that more than anything in the passage.
Mixing tenses would have been a poor choice, as it would bother the folks who care about proper English.
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### Author:  [@sturmhauke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sturmhauke)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2007, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-might-be-correct-but-it-drives-me-batshit-bitching-about-past-tense/391752/19 "2007-02-12T05:33:03Z")
Personally, I think stringing two or more "had"s together is a bad idea. It may be technically correct, but it’s jarring and kicks the reader out of the flow of the story.
---
### Author:  [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2007, 6:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-might-be-correct-but-it-drives-me-batshit-bitching-about-past-tense/391752/20 "2007-02-12T06:27:52Z")
[QUOTE=Exapno Mapcase]
Odd. I can think of dozens, if not hundreds, probably including every single author on the fiction bestseller list for any genre for the past several decades.
[/QUOTE]
I’m not elitist, but I don’t read many best sellers. My comment was in response to what I interpreted as an implication that this book was perhaps beyond my understanding.
> [@](#):
>
> Or maybe you just need to choose a different book. If I didn’t like page two of a book I’d find something else to read, or maybe come back to it much, much later. Some books are like that.
I’ll keep reading. I’ve read the first six of the nine books that Hobb set in this particular world, and I want to see how Fitz’s story ends. I expect it’ll be fine from here on.
I was curious about whether something like this would annoy anyone else, which is why I wrote the OP.
**panamajack** , I wonder if contractions are less common in fantasy writing, especially in dialogue. I’ve read a lot of stilted speech in fantasy, as if the writers thought that contractions were too modern or something.
**sturmhauke** , exactly.
**Frylock** , her writing usually flows nicely. She’s a good story teller, not a lot of fancy tricks but there’s depth and richness and emotion. I thought the Liveship books had some unnecessarily repetitive spots, but even I understand that fantasy fiction is supposed to be **fat**! 🙂
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