Editors should learn how to properly use news verb
Newspapers in Nairobi. PHOTO | JEFF ANGOTE | NATION MEDIA GROUP
What you need to know:
A past tense form is required only when the relevant verb stands for an event that really did take place, an action that was really completed, on some past occasion.
One traditional inclination by Kenya’s newspaper reporters and subeditors is to put every news verb in the past tense. That looks reasonable because past events are the stocks-in-trade of every commercial newspaper.
Yet the danger is clear to see. For a past tense form is required only when the relevant verb stands for an event that really did take place, an action that was really completed, on some past occasion.
But consider this statement on a Standard wraparound on September 1: “The government moved to ensure that no Kenyan youth was denied access to higher education…” “Moved” is correctly in the past tense because it refers to an action that really did take place in the past. The government really moved.
But why has the paper used the past-tense verb was instead of the present-tense verb is? For, although the government really “moved” (if only metaphorically), the question remains: Why is the verb was also in the past? In that construction, the verbal phrase “denied access” does not refer to any event that took place in the past.
“Denied access” is a mere supposition. It expresses only how – a s we know through experience – the government might respond to such a situation. It expresses only the fear that something might happen as a result of something else. Though based on notorious habits by public officials, the sentence does not refer to any particular example of those. It expresses only a fear residual in the public’s mind.
PARTICULAR TENSE
That is why it cannot be put in any particular tense. It is why, in your sentence, the past tense verb was cannot pass muster. No, the government moved to ensure merely that no Kenyan youth is (at all times) denied access to higher education…” Yes, the verb is remains in what looks like the present tense.
Yet let us stress that the verb must be is – not was – because it does not refer to any event that really took place in the past. It refers only to what is feared might have taken place as a result of something else. That is why the verb must be uncommitted to any true tense: “The government moved to ensure that no Kenyan youth is (from now on) denied access to higher education…”
Yet everybody in communication through one medium or another should be able to distinguish between a true tense and what is but a mood. For, here, though the conjugated verb “is” looks like it belongs to the present tense, it is, in truth, only a kind of subjunctive, namely, the mood used whenever a sprinkling of doubt attends any of the utterer’s statements.
In the above sentence – to reiterate – the verb must be is, not was, because there is no implication in it of any form of the past. Rather, it refers only to a well-known everyday habit in the public service. It refers only to an activity which, because it is habitual, may be seen as a kind of perpetual or permanent present.
