#past progressive

@valar-did-me-wrong Of course! Thanks for asking. :-)

It's just a draft, so it's very basic, and it will have to be polished and possibly (certainly) re-written several times.

I can share the basic idea of the story, too, if you want to. :-)

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She had feared rejection when she reached out for his mind, but he let her in. What she sensed was a tired, almost serene resignation, and it made her heart ache much more than if what she had found was hatred.

(It was a lie, beloved. All of it… What we had was true. My love was true.)

Time was her enemy, so she wasted no words as she unravelled the web of deception they had been trapped in. 

(Forgive me, please.)

(It is I who should ask for forgiveness. I should have known.)

She cried, then, at the sheer absurdity of those words, and even more at the knowledge that soon he would be forever out of her reach, for the Gift of Men was not hers, and she was bound to this world until the end of days.

He must have sensed it, and, stubborn as ever, insisted that they would meet again, no matter how long it might take.

(Do you truly believe that possible, Hallane?)

(Hope, meldonya, is the strongest of allies. Weren't those your very words, all those years ago? Lúthien was given that grace. So can we.)

Could they indeed?

(Have faith, Lossetári.)

She knew he was smiling. It was then that the darkness tore him away.

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And this is a draft of the ending. Takes place years after the first segment.

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Her heart was in turmoil as she faced the West at the prow of the ship, striving to chase away the bitter enemy that was doubt. Have faith, Lossetári. She clinged to those words, and found comfort in their embrace.

“No matter how long it might take,” she whispered.

Fill in the blanks with simple present/present continuous/simple past/past continuous forms of verbs given in brackets:

Louis Pasteur was a French chemist. He _________________ (discover) the root cause of some diseases and ________________ (find) a cure for them.

It was September. The African marigolds __________________ (bloom) and Maria, sitting in the garden, ____________________ (admire)…

That dreaded, awful thing. Every teacher/professor/knowledgeable person warns against the use of passive voice, but what exactly is it? Often people assume you learned about passive voice in high school grammar classes, but let’s be honest here, how many of us really remember what Mrs. Jameson in ninth grade said about the doer acting upon the subject?

Let’s have a little refresher.

Passive voice is when the subject of the sentence is being acted upon by the agent (the thing that is performing the action). The simplest way to determine passive voice is to ask yourself one question: Who/what is performing the action? You can do this with any sentence. 

Passive Voice (PV) Example: The ball was caught by the boy.

In this sentence, the boy is performing the action (catching). The ball is receiving the action (being caught).

Now let’s make that same sentence active:

Active Voice (AV) Example: The boy caught the ball.

Where it starts to get a little tricky is that the agent doesn’t always make it into the sentence. In those cases, you run into clarity issues- who or what is performing the action?

PV Example: The ball was caught.

These sentences have all been relatively simple to get the idea of passive voice across, but sentences can be much more complex in passive voice. You don’t think it’s happening, but sometimes it is.

PV Example: Brutus is often considered the tragic hero of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

Who/what is doing the considering? We don’t know because it’s not in the sentence. Critics, perhaps? The writer of the paper? Maybe. Who/what is being considered? Brutus. Passive voice.

An easy trick is using the phrase ‘by zombies.’ If you can add ‘by zombies’ to the sentence to make it sound as though the zombies are doing the action, it’s likely in passive voice. In the Julius Caesar example, adding ‘by zombies’ makes it sound as though the zombies consider Brutus the tragic hero.

PV Example: The ball was caught (by zombies).

PV Example: The foundation of the bourgeois was formed in the Middle Ages (by zombies).

Exception to the ‘by zombies’ rule: The boy was walking (by zombies). Yes, ‘by zombies’ works there, but the zombies have nothing to do with the verb. The zombies are not performing the verb. This leads me to my next point:

Past/Present Progressive is not Passive Voice.

Past progressive tense is used to show the continuation of an action.

Past Progressive AV Example: The boy was catching the ball.

Let’s ask the simple questions again. What is doing the catching? The boy. What is being caught? The ball. The verb ‘to be’ does not automatically designate passive voice and anyone telling you that is mistaken.

Past Progressive PV Example: The ball was being caught by the boy.

Present Progressive AV Example: The boy is performing the action.

Present Progressive PV Example: The action is being performed by the boy.

Use of ‘to be’ does not always indicate passive voice.

AV Example: The boy was brave.

That’s not passive voice because it’s describing a state of being. It’s not necessarily the greatest sentence (show don’t tell is a discussion for a different day), but it’s not passive voice.

Some more examples:

PV: Dad got called into work last night.

AV: Dad’s boss called him into work last night.

PV: All the food was eaten by the end of dinner except for my fruitcake.

AV: The guests ate all the food by the end of dinner except for my fruitcake.

PV: The man was being eaten by the tiger when my phone rang.

AV: The tiger was eating the man when my phone rang.

Du kannst das "past continuous" entweder durch ein "gerade" oder durch die Formulierung "dabei sein, etwas zu tun" deutlich machen.

Ich aß gerade. = I was (just) eating.

Das hört man so allerdings eher selten im alltäglichen Sprachgebrauch. Die nächste Lösung ist dafür vollkommen in Ordnung:

Ich war dabei zu kochen, als das Telefon klingelte. = I was cooking when the telephone rang.

Es gibt außerdem noch die sogenannte "Rheinische Verlaufsform", die ihren Weg in die Umgangssprache gefunden hat: 

I am working = Ich arbeite gerade. > Ich bin am Arbeiten. (Rheinische Verlaufsform)