Tense Use

In academic writing, the most frequent tenses used are past simple and present simple. Present perfect and future are less frequent, but also perform key functions at specific points in your writing. We can therefore say that the tenses that are most important to academic writing are: past simple, present perfect, present simple and future tense.

Below, you can quickly review the grammar associated with these four main tenses.

• Tenses Review: Academic Usage

Tense & Genre 

As alluded to above, specific tenses tend to be more prevalent in different parts of your writing. You can explore this relationship between tense and genre below:

• Introductions
• Body, Results, Discussions
• Conclusion