What is the correct verb tense to use?
Your English teachers through the years probably taught you to use present tense when discussing a written work; so now as you compose your literature review, you are using present tense to discuss all those studies. Right? Wrong. According to APA, you should use past tense (their results showed) or present perfect tense (studies have demonstrated) in the literature review. This rule may seem hard to apply when you are discussing what researchers believe. After all, isn’t it entirely possible that a researcher still holds a belief that was expressed in a paper written only a year ago? Yes, but consider this grim thought: maybe that researcher is no longer around. For instance, you wouldn’t say “Dewey believes” because you know that Dewey is dead. It is better, actually, to avoid words such as believe and use action verbs that can safely and reasonably be written in past tense: stated, wrote, argued, confirmed, etc. Another common error that people make regarding verb tense occurs when
