Every verb tells the reader not just what happened, but when. Here are all twelve English tenses, irregular verbs, voice, mood, and modals — explained clearly, with examples.
Tense is how English marks time. Get it right, and a reader knows exactly when something happened, is happening, or will happen — without a single extra word.
English has three basic time frames — past, present, and future — and four aspects within each: simple, continuous, perfect, and perfect continuous. Multiply these together and you get the twelve tenses that this guide covers in full, along with irregular verbs, active and passive voice, mood, and modal verbs.
Before the twelve tenses, it helps to see the three broad categories they all fall into:
Each time frame can be expressed in four different ways, depending on how the action relates to time:
Use: habits, facts, schedules. Form: base verb (+s for third person). Example: "She walks to school every day." / "Water boils at 100°C."
Use: actions happening right now, or fixed future plans. Form: am/is/are + verb-ing. Example: "She is walking to school right now." / "We are leaving tomorrow."
Use: past action with present relevance, or unfinished time up to now. Form: have/has + past participle. Example: "She has walked ten miles today."
Use: an action that started in the past and continues now, emphasising duration. Form: have/has been + verb-ing. Example: "She has been walking for two hours."
Use: a completed action at a specific past time. Form: verb + ed (or irregular form). Example: "She walked to school yesterday."
Use: an action in progress at a specific past moment, often interrupted by another. Form: was/were + verb-ing. Example: "She was walking when it started to rain."
Use: an action completed before another past action. Form: had + past participle. Example: "She had walked five miles before she stopped to rest."
Use: an ongoing action that continued up to a point in the past. Form: had been + verb-ing. Example: "She had been walking for an hour before she felt tired."
Use: a decision made now, a prediction, or a promise. Form: will + base verb. Example: "She will walk to school tomorrow."
Use: an action that will be in progress at a specific future time. Form: will be + verb-ing. Example: "She will be walking to school at 8 a.m."
Use: an action that will be completed before a specific future time. Form: will have + past participle. Example: "By 9 a.m., she will have walked two miles."
Use: an action that will continue up to a specific point in the future. Form: will have been + verb-ing. Example: "By 9 a.m., she will have been walking for two hours."
| Aspect | Past | Present | Future |
|---|---|---|---|
| Simple | walked | walks | will walk |
| Continuous | was walking | is walking | will be walking |
| Perfect | had walked | has walked | will have walked |
| Perfect Continuous | had been walking | has been walking | will have been walking |
Regular verbs form their past simple and past participle by adding -ed (walk → walked → walked). Irregular verbs change form unpredictably and must be learned individually.
| Base Form | Past Simple | Past Participle |
|---|---|---|
| go | went | gone |
| eat | ate | eaten |
| write | wrote | written |
| see | saw | seen |
| be | was/were | been |
Voice shows whether the subject performs the action (active) or receives it (passive).
Active: "The chef cooked the meal." (subject performs the action) Passive: "The meal was cooked by the chef." (subject receives the action)
Passive voice is formed with a form of "to be" + past participle, and is useful when the action matters more than who performed it — for example, in scientific or formal writing: "The samples were tested under controlled conditions."
Mood shows the speaker's attitude toward what is being said.
Modals combine with a base verb to express ability, permission, possibility, obligation, or advice. They never change form (no -s, -ing, or -ed) and are always followed by the base verb.
| Modal | Expresses | Example |
|---|---|---|
| can / could | ability, permission | She can swim. |
| may / might | possibility, permission | It might rain. |
| must | obligation, strong certainty | You must submit it today. |
| should | advice, recommendation | You should see a doctor. |
| will / would | future, hypothetical, polite request | Would you help me? |
Consider this line from a project update email: "By the time you read this, the team will have finished testing, and the results will be shared by Friday." The first clause uses the future perfect ("will have finished") to show an action completed before a future point, while the second uses the future simple passive ("will be shared") because the focus is on the results, not on who is sharing them. Choosing the right tense and voice here makes the timeline of the project instantly clear to the reader.
Tense is what places every sentence you write in time. Once you know the parts of speech (Topic I), how to structure a sentence (Topic II), and how to punctuate it (Topic III), tense and verb form (Topic IV) is what lets you say precisely when something happened — a small grammatical choice that has a large effect on how clearly a reader understands you.
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