When do you refer to what is reported in a…well…report or article as past or present tense? Are the activities of Einsteing in the past, but the findings state in a report referred to in the present? I see advice that says that data in tables should be stated in the present tense (“Table 1 in the study lists…”) but others seem to make blanket statements about using past tense in general.
Here’s an example:
"The latest Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) appraisal by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) lists the Food Stamp Program as “moderately effective.” "
I try to use the present tense in my papers, since mathematical truths are eternal. For example, I would have to say, “Euclid showed unique prime factorization” but, “Integers have unique prime factorization, as shown by Euclid”. I think I am in the minority, however. I also use “I” rather than “we” when possible. (“We” if there are coauthors of course, but also if I feel that I am talking about my readers and me collectively.) That goes very much against usual academic style, but I don’t care. It helps that I am the TeX editor of the journal where I publish most of my papers, so I get the last word. But I make no attempt to enforce my views on other authors.
So what is the “usual accademic style” or “majority”? I assume the former is what I was taught in English class: to avoid use of the first person, but what is the latter? Past tense all the time, present tense all the time, or something else?
Us what I call the soporific mode. Lots of passives (no subject pronoun needed), very long and convoluted sentences, in math, never use words if you can do it with formulas, oh, I can’t think of all the ways. But I think there is a strong tendency to use past tense, especially the compound past (mistakenly called the perfect, although it is actually mostly imperfective). Oh and heavy on semicolons and parenthetical clauses (which I am guilty of.)