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Tense in Information Prominent Citations

When the focus of your citation is on the information, you should write the citation in the present tense. The present tense is used when the information you are citing is generally accepted as scientific fact.

NOTE: Some publications use only this citation form to credit sources.

Tense in Weak Author Prominent Citations

The present perfect tense is used in citations where the focus is on the research area of several authors. This kind of citation is called weak author prominent.

 

 

General Statements about the Research

The present perfect tense is also used in general statements that describe the level of research activity in an area. These statements are often written without citations.

Information prominent citations, weak author prominent citations, and general statements are usually written at the beginning of Stage II, or at transition points at the beginning of new sections within Stage II.

Tense in Author Prominent Citations

Later in Stage II, you use author prominent citations to report the findings of individual studies closely related to your own. In these citations the simple past tense is used in the verb of report.

As you can see from these rules, the progression of verb tenses in your literature review follows the progression shown in the diagram below.

FIGURE 3.2 Progression of tenses in Stage II.

Attitude and Tense in Reported Findings

We have seen that the focus you choose helps to determine the tenses of the verbs in your literature review. Similarly, in author prominent citations your attitude towards the findings of the researchers also affects the complement verb forms in your Stage II sentences. You may feel that:

1. the findings of a particular study are generally accepted as fact;

2. the findings of a particular study are limited to that study, but are not to be accepted as true in all cases;

3. the author(s) of the study you are citing may themselves feel tentative about their findings; or they may not be reporting findings at all but only making suggestions or proposals.

Depending on which attitude you take towards the findings of the researchers you cite, you may use the present tense, the past tense, or various modal auxiliaries.

1. When you believe the findings you are citing are fact, use the present tense in the complement verb (that is, the verb in the part of the sentence giving the findings).

2. When you believe the findings are restricted to the specific study you are citing, use the past tense in the complement verb.

3. Finally, if the findings you are citing were seen by the original authors as tentative, or were only suggestions or proposals rather than findings, use tentative verbs for the verb of report, and a modal auxiliary with the complement verb.

 

Notice that in all three of these cases, the verb of report is always in the past tense, while the verb tense in the "findings" part of the sentence varies according to the author's attitude.

Signal Words and Verb Tenses in Stages III, IV, and V

As we have seen, when you write each of the last three stages to your introduction, you have several choices in determining the kind of focus you wish to give to your information. The choices you make in each case will determine the vocabulary and grammatical structures you will need in order to write these stages.