Freemage . wrote:

   So here we go with another lesson on grammar.  Today's evil nemesis
is:  Verb Tenses!  

*******

   There are no less than eleven verb tenses:
         (Simple) Present         Past Perfect
         (Simple) Past            Past Perfect Progressive
         (Simple) Future          Future Progressive
         Present Progressive      Future Perfect
         Present Perfect          Future Perfect Progressive
         Past Progressive

You left out present perfect progressive.

	Kasumi _has been sleeping_ with Dr. Tofu.

The progressive form is technically considered a voice, not a tense, but
I suppose it doesn't matter here. 

   Now, let's say you're in the past tense, and you need to refer to
some event that happened before the present point in the story.  You're
going to need the past perfect tense to talk about it.  When I'm giving
feedback, I also refer to the past perfect as the "had form" of the verb
or the "double past tense".

   As the first name implies, this form of the verb takes the
supplemental verb "had" added to the verb's past tense:

This is wrong.

There are four forms of any verb:  present, past, present participle,
and past participle.  Past perfect tense is formed using "had" + the
past PARTICIPLE form, not the past form.  

With regular verbs, the past and past participle are identical, as
follows:

	I listen.
	I am listening
	I listened
	I had listened

Some irregular verbs also have identical past and past participle forms,
as well.

	I sleep
	I am sleeping
	I slept
	I had slept.

But many do not.  The most common is "to be."

	I am happy.
	I am being happy.
	I was happy.
	I had been happy.

Other such words include see (see, seeing, saw, seen), do (do, doing,
did, done), rise (rise, rising, rose, risen), and come(come, coming,
came, come).

Most people don't make errors on "see" or "do," but I have seen phrases
like "the sun had rose" more times than I care to think about.  If the
simple past ends in -ed, so will the past participle, but if it doesn't,
make sure you use the right form.

Oh, and make sure you know which verbs are irregular.  I've seen people
write "rised" and "slayed" before.  

-- David