Day 149: Keep main verbs in one tense.

The main verbs are the verbs that are connected to the subject in a sentence. Consider this sentence.

“The proposal succeeded locally but failed when reviewed by the governor.”

In this sentence, the two main verbs are in the simple past tense. Writers sometimes make mistakes with verb tenses when the sentence has more than one main verb. The mistake is using one verb in one tense, and the other verb in a different tense. For example, this sentence has an error:

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“The proposal succeeds locally but failed when reviewed by the governor.”

The first verb is in the present tense, and the second verb is in the past tense. They should both be the same. To correct this, we might revise the sentence to use two present tense verbs or to use two past tense verbs, as in the first example.