I have been a little confused recently about the naming of verb tenses. When I was at school I learned that there was the future tense (I will walk), the present (I am walking or I walk), the imperfect (I walked), the perfect (I have walked) and the pluperfect (I had walked). Then I read a book on grammar and it told me that the tenses are: future (I will walk), present (I am walking), simple past (I walked), past imperfect (I have walked) and past perfect (I had walked).

Now this is most confusing. It may be that there is a difference in the naming of the tenses in the USA and the UK, where I live, or it may be that there has been some change that I have missed. The above, which I said I had learned at school, I learned in English, French and Latin classes so it wasn’t just that we had a poor teacher who got it wrong. I wanted to write a blog about using tenses, but this discrepancy makes it rather difficult as it feels wrong to use what I have read in this particular book.

So what about today’s blog? I was going to do one on the use of the past tense, but until I can clear up this little problem I have with nomenclature I’ll leave it to a further date.

Please would some of you help me with this little problem by responding in the comments section.