Writing History: Past Tense versus Past Perfect Tense

Laura recently requested I write about tense, especially in relation to historical writing, and I’m glad she did! It’s a great topic that can be confusing, and there’s a lot of debate in the historical writing community about what tense to use then. It can—dare I say—get tense.

I am going to break my coverage of tense in historical writing into two different posts—one that clarifies when to use past perfect versus past tense (a relatively uncontroversial topic) and another that covers the use of present tense in historical writing (which stirs a lot of debate).

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