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I'm saying frequent use of present progressive in speech is a modern thing.
Cite?
I'm just guessing, as I said in the first place.
Every time I clarify a detail someone gets tripped up on a detail I didn't repeat.
Present tense grammatical construction is commonly and appropriately used to express a continuing situation or condition, within the context of past-tense narrative.
caw
I'm saying frequent use of present progressive in speech is a modern thing.
I write in present tense because that's simply how things come to me, and I consider readers who won't read present tense lost in the same way I consider readers who won't read a particular story's genre.
Nothin' I can do to change them, so sod it.
I write in present tense because that's simply how things come to me, and I consider readers who won't read present tense lost in the same way I consider readers who won't read a particular story's genre.
Nothin' I can do to change them, so sod it.
I can't think of a single novel I've enjoyed that has been written in present tense, but my WIP is aggressively presenting itself to me that way. in third?
future perfect continuous
There's a difference between catergorically dimissing a particular style of writing as annoying and saying it doesn't work for you.
Like I said, you can.THE WAR AT THE END OF THE WORLD switches between 1st person, 3rd person, present, and past, and won a Nobel Prize.
Literary voice? Teen-ager voice. The adults around me don't use it, only the kiddies. When I was a kid, we used to say things like, Ain't got none. Lovely, isn't it? We thought it was cute. It wasn't. I don't find present or present progressive cute either. I didn't know folks in other parts of the world, adult folks that is, speak that way.That's an even more bizarre usage. If things really are in the past, why would you use present?
I do encounter it; it seems more common in young people (American side). Goes like this: "So the other day I'm listening to the radio, and this guy comes on and starts whining about this bad date he had."
It seems that they are leaping into a sort of literary voice when speaking. You only encounter it when people are "telling a story", not simply relating a simple fact. Nobody would say, "Yesterday I eat a muffin for breakfast." If they do say that, then you know to expect that they will now describe something interesting that resulted from eating the muffin. You know it's a story because they are using a story mode of speech.
Legitimizing a literary style based on a mode of speech that derives from a literary style is circular.
I hope I don't run into any today. Ya know what I mean?So, I'm talking to my mom, and she says, "I need some bananas."
So I go to the store, and the checkout clerk--he's the hottest thing you've ever seen--says, "Hey, gorgeous."
And then I'm all, OMG.
You've never run across anyone who relates personal stories or anecdotes like that? Informal, yes. But so is fiction a lot of the time.
Can't wait.Quite true. You can pick up the audiotape and listen instead ;-)
AMEN, sister.If I find something annoying, then I can surely say "Thus-and-such is annoying." "Annoying to me" is implied, since no one can say with certainty that something is annoying to other people, or to everyone. If you are annoyed by rude salesclerks, is it being condescending to say rude salesclerks are annoying?
IOW, "annoying" is a perception, and can therefore only belong to the person who perceives it that way. It doesn't say anything about whether the thing in question is somehow objectively annoying. <--oxymoron
As a person who is one of those lost readers... yeah, this.I write in present tense because that's simply how things come to me, and I consider readers who won't read present tense lost in the same way I consider readers who won't read a particular story's genre.
Nothin' I can do to change them, so sod it.
Intriguing. Not sure what it consists of, but intriguing all the same !
You'll have been sitting down, preparing yourself to slot into the new novel you will have just gotten your hands on. You'll have been reading, and about half way down the first page, it'll have hit you.
define modern...?*
Present progressive tense wasn't around in Shakespeare's time, but I don't think it evolved that recently. I'm pretty sure I've read present progressive in books written 100 or so years ago.