The English Tenses Practical Grammar Guide

I am going through a spate of informal grammar self-education.

I am an attorney and I write for a living, but as a graduate of the California school system, I've always felt a bit insecure about my grammar ability. I am particularly concerned about it when I hear about the “past perfect” tense or the “future imperfect” tense.

What the heck is all that about.

This book was absolutely perfect in my project. The author provides an extremely organized survey of the three tenses - past, present and future - and the four subordinate tenses - simple, continuing, perfect, and perfect continuing. He explains what distinguishes the tenses and provides examples, including charts, of how these verbs are conjugated.

I've been amusing myself since reading the book by identifying tenses in the texts I have been reading. (“Have been” + present participle (reading) makes it a present perfect continuing tense, which normally shows duration, but in this case shows a past action affecting the present, and, most importantly, that this past action happened recently. Seriously, we just do the grammar instinctively, but to know why is most enlightening.)

Obviously, I recommend this highly.