ブログ / Verb Tense Mistakes: 23 Real Examples and How to Fix Them

Verb Tense Mistakes: 23 Real Examples and How to Fix Them

Verb tense tells the reader when something happened. Most tense errors are not about knowing the forms, but about keeping them consistent and choosing the right one for the time expression in the sentence. The examples below are real sentences that people sent to Proofread Bot.

The corrections below are written in formal, academic English.

1. Present tense with a past time expression

Words like yesterday, last week, and ago require the past tense.

✗ I eat wings yesterday.
✓ I ate wings yesterday.

✗ She eats two hours ago.
✓ She ate two hours ago.

✗ He kills a man yesterday.
✓ He killed a man yesterday.

✗ I go to school last week.
✓ I went to school last week.

✗ Samantha and I go to the movies yesterday.
✓ Samantha and I went to the movies yesterday.

✗ I will go home last week.
✓ I went home last week.

✗ We are walking to her house yesterday.
✓ We were walking to her house yesterday.

2. Switching tense in the middle of a sentence

Once you have chosen a tense for a sequence of events, keep it unless the time actually changes.

✗ I go to the store and bought milk.
✓ I went to the store and bought milk.

✗ I go to the park and played basketball.
✓ I went to the park and played basketball.

✗ Once, I had to go there and I have dinner.
✓ Once, I had to go there, and I had dinner.

✗ Today we are swimming, and yesterday we are running.
✓ Today we are swimming, and yesterday we were running.

✗ I worked at Wendy's now.
✓ I work at Wendy's now.

3. Present perfect with a specific past time

The present perfect ("I have seen") connects the past to the present. It cannot be used with a finished, specific time such as "yesterday" or "last summer." Use the simple past instead.

✗ I have seen him yesterday.
✓ I saw him yesterday.

✗ He has returned from London last week.
✓ He returned from London last week.

✗ I have been in New York last summer.
✓ I was in New York last summer.

This is one of the most common errors for speakers of German, French, Italian, and other languages in which the equivalent of "I have seen" is the normal way to talk about the past.

4. Present continuous for an action that started in the past

When an action began in the past and is still going on, English uses the present perfect continuous, not the present continuous.

✗ It is raining for two days.
✓ It has been raining for two days.

✗ The baby is sleeping for three hours now.
✓ The baby has been sleeping for three hours.

5. Missing or wrong helping verbs

✗ He ran out of water, so he walking to the store.
✓ He ran out of water, so he is walking to the store.

✗ Law enforcement officials are respond to the attack.
✓ Law enforcement officials are responding to the attack.

✗ He is involve in building houses.
✓ He is involved in building houses.

✗ Volumental, a Stockholm-based company, is created a browser-based scanner.
✓ Volumental, a Stockholm-based company, has created a browser-based scanner.

✗ I am have saved the logs.
✓ I have saved the logs.

The continuous tenses need be plus -ing; the passive needs be plus the past participle; the perfect tenses need have plus the past participle. Mixing the parts produces sentences like "is created" when "has created" was meant.

6. Tense in academic writing

Academic writing has its own conventions. When describing what a source says, most style guides use the present tense ("Smith argues that…"). When reporting your own completed research, use the past tense ("We collected data from 200 participants"). When interpreting results, the present tense is common ("These findings suggest…").

✗ AFR reporting showed a decrease in presentations compared to the previous week.
✓ AFR reporting shows a decrease in presentations compared with the previous week.

Proofread Bot checks tense consistency across each sentence and flags time expressions that do not match the verb. For past-tense forms specifically, see irregular verb mistakes.

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