Verb Tense Consistency

Verb tense indicates the time of the verb: past, present, or future, illustrating when an action takes place:

After I get the call from the school (present), I will call my parents (future).

When you write a paragraph, you need to be particularly careful to pay attention to the verb tenses throughout the entire paragraph. Unnecessary shifts in verb tenses can cause confusion.

I jumped when I heard the door slam. I run to the window to see if there were any cars outside. I stood frozen in the room, wondering what to do, so I fly up the stairs.

Suddenly, as we were running toward the end zone, a huge dog jumps in front of the quarterback.

Dr. Eggleston was talking to the students about statistical analysis. She frowns when a loud hammering suddenly drowned out her voice.

Of course, there are occasions where it is necessary to shift tenses, however, but just make sure you have a specific reason for doing so:

Students today remember very little about the Challenger explosion other than the films they watched in grade school.

Read the following paragraph, paying attention to the highlighted verbs. Change any verbs which are not consistent:

I used to think I want to major in biology. After taking a biology class my first semester, however, I realize that perhaps biology was not for me. I decided not to worry about it and to just take classes that fulfilled my core requirements. I took a journalism class and I loved it. I have decided to major in journalism, and I felt confident that this is the right decision.

 
Compare the paragraph above to the corrected version below:

I used to think I wanted to major in biology. After taking a biology class my first semester, however, I realized that perhaps biology was not for me.  I decided not to worry about it and to just take classes that fulfilled my core requirements. I took a journalism class and I loved it. I have decided to major in journalism, and I feel confident that this is the right decision.