Simple Past or Past Continuous?

[tangelatm]

Hello everybody!
Tell me, please, which of the underlined words best fit in the following sentence:
Shortly afterward / afterwards their house was entered by the burglars, while the big dog slept / was sleeping.
Thank you,
Angela

[MikeNewYork]

Originally Posted by tangelatm

Hello everybody!
Tell me, please, which of the underlined words best fit in the following sentence:
Shortly afterward / afterwards their house was entered by the burglars, while the big dog slept / was sleeping.
Thank you,
Angela

Afterward and afterwards are just different forms of the same word. You can use either. For the verb, I would choose the progressive form. The dog was in a process when the burglars entered.

[MikeNewYork]

Angela, please stop posting the same question two or three times on this forum. That just clogs up the folders. Thank you.

[tangelatm]

Hi Mike!
Sorry for all the trouble I have caused you...
It's only that I was a bit scared my message got lost somewhere and I badly needed some answers.
Thanks again,
Angela

[MikeNewYork]

Originally Posted by tangelatm

Hi Mike!
Sorry for all the trouble I have caused you...
It's only that I was a bit scared my message got lost somewhere and I badly needed some answers.
Thanks again,
Angela

That's all right, Angela. No harm done.

If you think a thread you started has been overlooked, find that thread and post a message in it. That will put it at the top of the list.

[Johan[@CLT]]

Angela,

What the use of the past or past continuous concerns. Looking at your example sentence I can advise to look at it like this; You use the past for the shortest action and the past continuous for the longer anction. You also use the word "while" which means that there are two action taking places at the same time.
Sleeping is an action that lasts for a few hours, this makes it a continuous action.
Breaking in/entering on the other hand, may take some time but not as long as sleeping

So, when you have a sentence where two action take place at the same time or around the same time mentioned you just look at the action that takes the longest and put that one in the continuous form.


Kind Regards

[rewboss]

The present continuous, as you probably know, is usually used to describe an action that is in progress now. The past continuous is usually used to describe an action that was in progress at a specific point in time in the past. That action started some time before that point in time.

Compare these two sentences:

I went to St Ives.
I was going to St Ives.

The first sentence describes the whole action. The action was completed in the past.

The second sentence describes an action that was in progress at a certain time. The action may or may not have been competed -- we don't know.

For this reason, we often do use the past continuous to describe an action that took a long time, and the past simple for an action that interrupted it. For example:

I was sitting in the bath when the phone rang.
Peter was playing tennis when he broke his ankle.
Susie was listening to some music when her cat was sick on the floor.

The past continuous can act to describe a scene. Just as we use the present continuous to describe a scene now -- "Janet is eating crisps, Philip is trying to dance, Mary is flirting with John" -- so we can use the past continuous to describe a scene in the past -- "When we arrived, Janet was eating crisps, Philip was trying to dance, Mary was flirting with John."

Note that we don't have to have a past simple form anywhere. Consider a police interview:

"Can you tell me what you were doing at 8 o'clock on Tuesday night, sir?"
"Yes, I was sitting in the living room, reading a book."

The person being interviewed is explaining what action was in progress at that time; the action was not yet complete.

Incidentally, "St Ives" above is a reference to an old riddle. Here it is -- and note the use of the past continuous and the past simple:

As I was going to St Ives,
I met a man with seven wives;
Each wife had seven sacks,
Each sack had seven cats,
Each cat had seven kits.
Kits, cats, sacks and wives,
How many were going to St Ives?

(A "kit" here is a kitten -- a baby cat.)

While you work out the answer to that riddle, I should tell you the reason it says "had" -- past simple -- where you might expect "was having", as it describes the scene. Well, there are some verbs you can't use in the progressive form, and some that change their meaning in the progressive form. "Have" is one of those: in the progressive form, it doesn't mean "possess"; it means "receive" -- "I was having my injections." We want it to mean "possess" here, so we have to use the simple past.

OK, here's the answer:

One person was going to St Ives. I was the one going to St Ives; the people and the cats I met were going the other way.

[mykwyner]

Just to be a contrarian, I like while the dog slept. That wonderful, yet underappreciated conjunction while means during the time that. Using the past, or any continuous tense in that environment is, IMHO, redundant and unnecessary, albeit perfectly grammatical.

[MikeNewYork]

Originally Posted by mykwyner

Just to be a contrarian, I like while the dog slept. That wonderful, yet underappreciated conjunction while means during the time that. Using the past, or any continuous tense in that environment is, IMHO, redundant and unnecessary, albeit perfectly grammatical.

Interesting thought. Hmmmm.

[rewboss]

Interesting thought, but using that logic you could say that when the plurality of something is obvious, there's no need to use a plural.

Take the sentence "The boys are reading." "Boys" carries a marker of plurality -- the "s" -- so, you could argue, there's no need for the verb also to carry a plural marker. Why not say, "The boys is reading"? Or even, "The boys be reading"?

Neither of those constructions is standard English, although they do occur in some dialects.