Amo, Amas, Amat, and Running About Like Hooligans

“Amo, amas, you know, and runnin’ about like hooligans,” says Sir Ector in The Sword In The Stone, and we instinctively feel his pain and recognise one of the great truths of the writing world, drifting just beyond our ken.

Ector, if he were alive today, would no doubt have something equally trenchant to say about writers who ignore the proper conjugation of verbs. Or perhaps he’d stick to what he knew, and say, ‘Running about like hooligans’, for that is indeed what we do when we trample casually over the proper forms and ignore the structure of our language. I am seeing a great deal of unfortunate verbal behaviour in the published work of independent writers these days, and it cannot be sufficiently deplored.

However, as we know from all the management courses of the 1980s, it’s bad form to complain about a problem without offering a solution, and therefore I give you this handy guide to the conjugation of verbs.

Conjugation, what

The OED tells us that ‘A conjugation is a scheme of all the inflexional forms belonging to a verb.’ It is a kind of table, where you can read off the one you want by knowing the parameters; just as in a multiplication table you can discover, by finding the intersection of the ‘6’ column with the ‘9’ row that the product of 6 and 9 is 54 (no, Virginia, not 42), so with a proper knowledge of the conjugation table you can discover that the simple past second person singular of ‘raid’ is ‘raided’.

Let’s take a walk through the various tenses of a typical English verb: ‘to raid’. I’ve chosen this verb because it is a regular verb - its inflexions are the standard ones and there is no alteration of the root.

Root, what

The root of a verb is basically the part that doesn’t change. The various inflexions are added to it, in English, always at the end. Of course, some verbs’ roots do change - write, run, sing - the vowels change with the past tenses. There are also some highly irregular verbs in English where the whole word changes - the most common of these is ‘to go’. How these have come about is very interesting, but it’s outside the scope of this article. For our purposes, we just have to know them - whether we have our conjugation on paper and look it up, or memorise the whole thing.

Present Tense

We all know what the present tense is, right? It’s the popular resort of novice writers, particulary in the YA and porn genres. Often these people fondly imagine that writing in the present tense will be easier than in the past tense, presumably because they think that if you are writing in the present tense you can ignore all the other tenses. Guess what - you can’t.

Singular		Plural
I	raid	we	raid
you	raid	you	raid
he/she/it	raids	they	raid

The verb, as you can see, is very simple in the present tense. This is, of course, the indicative mood - I am not getting into mood and voice in this article. We are going to look at only the active voice and indicative mood today.

Simple Past Tense

The simple past tense is the most commonly used of the various past tenses. It forms our standard narrative tense. It describes actions taken and completed in the past.

Singular		Plural
I	raided	we	raided
you	raided	you	raided
he/she/it	raided	they	raided

As you can see, all of the inflexions in this tense are the same. This tense is the simplest to use, and by the way, it is also the most invisible to a reader.

Continuous Past Tense

Continuous past tense is used to describe actions taken in the past, but not completed at the time of which we are speaking. They indicate an ongoing action.

Singular		Plural
I	was raiding	we	were raiding
you	were raiding	you	were raiding
he/she/it	was raiding	they	were raiding

Here, it is the auxiliary verb to be that is inflected. You will observe that the inflexions of it are exactly the same as if the verb to be were being conjugated in the simple past tense.

Note how the second person singular inflexion is the same as all of the plural ones. There are interesting historical reasons for this, but they are outside the scope of what we are doing today.

See what I did there? What we are doing. This is the present continuous tense, the next tense we will consider.

Continuous Present Tense

Continuous present tense is used to describe actions taking place in the present which are not being immediately completed. If I say, for example, ‘I raid the Goth settlement,’ the reader knows that the raid is complete at the end of the sentence. The next sentence will be expected to deal with something that takes place after the raid. If, on the other hand, I say ‘I am raiding the Goth settlement,’ this means the raid is ongoing, and the next sentence will take place in a world where that raid is still in progress. This is rather an oversimplification, but as we are introducing the concept of conjugations, let’s stick to the basics.

Singular		Plural
I	am raiding	we	are raiding
you	are raiding	you	are raiding
he/she/it	is raiding	they	are raiding

Notice again how the root verb is in the gerund form throughout, and all of the inflexions are on the auxiliary verb to be. They are exactly the same as the present tense of the verb to be.

Future Tense

The future tense describes an action that will take place in the future, and will be completed within the time frame that is being considered.

Singular		Plural
I	will raid	we	will raid
you	will raid	you	will raid
he/she/it	will raid	they	will raid

As with the simple past tense, all of the inflexions are the same.

Future Continuous Tense

The future continuous tense describes an action that at the future time being considered will be in progress. I include it here because it is in quite common use when we speak, for instance, of our plans and schedules: On Tuesday afternoon, I will be raiding the Goth Settlement, so I can’t make lunch with Aunty Mavis.

Singular		Plural
I	will be raiding	we	will be raiding
you	will be raiding	you	will be raiding
he/she/it	will be raiding	they	will be raiding

Again, all the inflexions are the same. Note how the auxiliary verb to be is in its standard Future Tense form.

Perfect and Past Perfect tenses

These tenses are often misunderstood, and seem largely to have disappeared from the ken of many people publishing today (one hesitates to call them writers). They are used to describe actions that have completed in the past. Be aware that even if you are writing in the present tense, you will need these tenses from time to time.

Perfect Tense

The perfect tense describes an action that is already complete, but it has a stronger sense of completion than does the simple past tense. Consider the two sentences:

A) I raided the Goth settlement.

B) I have raided the Goth settlement.

In sentence A, the speaker reports an action he has taken in the past. And that’s it. In sentence B, however, he reports something more than that. He is a person who has raided a Goth settlement. It’s a subtle distinction, but a very real one.

Now consider the following conversation.

Freda: John, what about cutting the grass?

John (A): I cut the grass last Wednesday.

John (B): I have already cut the grass.

In Response A, John says that he cut the grass last Wednesday. The implication is that it does not need cutting again yet. In Response B, however, he is saying something about the immediate present. The implication is that the grass cutting has taken place within the time frame that is now under consideration - perhaps today, or this weekend. Do you see the different shades of meaning?

Singular		Plural
I	have raided	we	have raided
you	have raided	you	have raided
he/she/it	has raided	they	have raided

The perfect and past perfect tenses use the auxiliary verb to have, instead of to be. Note how the verb takes the same forms as to have takes in the simple present tense.

Past Perfect Tense

This is the last tense we will consider today, but it is a very important one. The past perfect tense describes a completed action that was already completed in the past at a past time that is being considered.

Singular		Plural
I	had raided	we	had raided
you	had raided	you	had raided
he/she/it	had raided	they	had raided

This tense is vital if your narrative is in simple past tense. There will be times when you wish to refer to a past - that is, a time that is in the past from the point of view of your narrative. Because the ‘present’ in your simple past narrative is being written in the past tense, if you want to talk about something that is, for example, already past to your point-of-view character, you need this tense.

Consider the following:

Joe sank into his chair and slumped onto the desk. He had covered the entire district on foot, but nowhere had anyone heard news of Bad Mal.

In this example, the narrative is in simple past tense (Joe sank into his chair). Therefore, when he considers his actions earlier that day, the simple past tense cannot be used, for it is analogous to the present in our narrative.

Let’s take a look at the sentence without past perfect tense.

Joe sank into his chair and slumped onto the desk. He covered the entire district on foot, but nowhere did anyone hear news of Bad Mal.

How stupid does this look? It conjures up images of Joe covering the district on foot while seated at his desk, which is a nonsense. There are few errors that will make you look more incompetent than failing to employ the appropriate tense.

That’s All For Now

There are plenty more tenses in the English language, but these eight will cover most of what you will use from day to day. Further variations are provided by passive voice and imperative and subjunctive moods, but we must leave consideration of these interesting and fun features of our language for another time.