A column on writing from Editor & Publisher August 1, 1981.

Marking Time

You can ask yourself When? 100 times and still not write a decent lead for some stories until you put the time answers in order. Here is an approach that has helped me.

Events fall into three areas of time:

1. The moment of the event you are covering.
2. The time before that event.
3. The time after that event.

Only rarely, however, in a news story are these the three times: past, present, and future. Typically, we report on something that happened yesterday--the past, then we refer to something else that happened in the more distant past--before that event, and perhaps another event even before that.

Moreover, something relevant may have happened after our event, like last night, but also in the past. In other words, our report may be about three, or more, related events, before our main event (the news story), and after our event, but all in the past.

To mark these times, English has a useful but neglected verb tense, the past perfect, to tell us which event came before another in the past, and was completed in the past. Formed with had (had broken, had been breaking), it is called the perfect tense, perfect from the Latin for completed, done, finished.

Knuckles played poorly in yesterday's game because he had broken his toe.

Both events are in the past. Had broken tells us that the break happened before the game. Not so clear: Knuckles played poorly in yesterday's game because he broke (simple past) his toe. Did he break it during the game?

Here is how the had tense helps keep track of four related past events in this New York Times News Service lead (The times are italicized):

President Reagan proposed Thursday that congressional leaders of both parties meet with his personal representative "to launch a bipartisan effort to save Social Security." The move came eight days after the administration had made public its own Special Security plan, one that ... aroused almost immediate opposition.... The president acted a day after the Senate by a resounding 96-0 vote had expressed strong criticism of two major elements of his plan....

In the order the four events happened, the paragraph would read:

Eight days ago, the administration made public its own Social Security plan, which aroused almost immediate opposition. Two days ago, the Senate by a resounding 96-0 vote expressed strong criticism of two major elements of his plan. Yesterday, President Reagan proposed that congressional leaders of both parties meet with his personal representative.

That's a lot clearer, but it is not a lead. In news stories, LIFO applies: Last [event] In. First Out [into your story]. The latest news is spilled first [Reagen calling for a pow-wow]. Readers are used to fairy tales--FIFO, First [event] In, First Out, but they won't mind if we can keep the time untangled for them.

The past perfect (and the present perfect--have/has broken) may be falling into disuse because so many writers now write as they talk. They have read so little, they have not picked up the writing dialect from good writers.

Talk: She visited a swampy part of India, and she caught malaria.

Clear writing, showing the relationships of events: Because she had visited a swampy part of India, she caught malaria.

Modern writing: Because she visited a swampy part of India, she caught malaria. The causal link is there with because, but without had, the reader has been denied a clue about the sequence of events. Readers need as many clues as we can give them.

Consider: She caught malaria after visiting a swampy part of India. Not bad. After gives the sequence clue, like had, but only hints at the causality that because makes plain.

For more on time, see #9, Lead Times.

Ethel Grodzins Romm is a writer and editor currently living in New York City. She is the author of The Open Conspiracy: What America's Angry Generation is Saying (review) (auction with cover), several of the Strategies in Reading workbook series and others. She appeared in the film Paranormal: Science or Pseudoscience? She has written columns on language for Editor & Publisher, The American Bar Association Journal and many others. She is currently working on a book on management.