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| Image courtesy of Stuart Miles, http://www.freedigitalphotos.net |
A post by Michael
Hait, Historical writing and when to use present
tense caught my eye. In
it, he refers to an article Ben Yagoda Gets Sick of the Historical
Present (on the Chronicle for Higher Education website).
As genealogists, we do a lot of writing! Much of it might be in the form of Facebook
posts, e-mails, blog posts, entries into our genealogy software, etc, and it is
still writing. Whether we’ve written one
sentence or a 10-page footnoted article, we need to be “clear” in our
communication.
That said, I found both Michael’s post and that by Ben
Yagoda fun reads and they make a lot of sense.
Stick to the present or past depending on the context of what you are
writing. That’s neat, clean, and very
understandable.
What do you think
of the Historical Present as a tense in genealogy writing? Can it be
appropriate or should it be eliminated?
Editor's Note: Harold Henderson, Midwestern Microhistory: A genealogy blog recently post a related piece, "I" and "We" in genealogy writing. He focuses on perspective vs verb tenses.
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