Future-In-Past Tense

Understanding the Future-In-Past Tense

The future-in-past tense is a fascinating grammatical concept used to express an event that was anticipated or expected to happen in the future, viewed from a past point in time. It doesn’t necessarily mean the event occurred. It’s about past perspective on future possibilities.

Key Concepts

The core idea is to look back from a past moment and talk about what was expected to occur next. This tense often involves auxiliary verbs like ‘would’ or ‘was/were going to’ combined with a base verb.

• Past perspective on future events.
• Implies expectation or prediction from a past viewpoint.
• Doesn’t guarantee the event’s completion.

Deep Dive into Structure

The typical structure involves the past tense of ‘to be’ or ‘to go’ followed by ‘to’ and the base form of the verb, or using ‘would’ followed by the base verb. For example:

She said she would help.

They were going to visit next week.

In these examples, the ‘saying’ and ‘being’ are in the past, but the ‘helping’ and ‘visiting’ were future events from that past perspective.

Applications in Narrative

This tense is invaluable in storytelling, historical writing, and recounting personal experiences. It allows writers to:

• Build suspense by describing planned but unfulfilled actions.
• Convey the atmosphere of past expectations.
• Show character intentions or predictions made in the past.

Consider this:

He thought the train would arrive on time. (The arrival was future relative to his thought.)

Challenges and Misconceptions

A common confusion is with the simple past or conditional perfect. The key difference lies in the temporal viewpoint. Future-in-past focuses strictly on the future from a past standpoint, whereas other tenses might indicate completed actions or hypothetical situations without that specific past-to-future link.

FAQs

What is the difference between future-in-past and simple future?

Simple future talks about the future from the present (e.g., ‘I will go’). Future-in-past talks about the future from the past (e.g., ‘I said I would go’).

Does future-in-past mean the event happened?

Not necessarily. It expresses an intention or expectation from the past, which may or may not have been realized.