Language desk
< November 9	<< Oct \| November \| Dec >>	November 11 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

November 10

Past tense, "I happen to..."

Consider:

I happen to try the above solutions in my project and for some reason I was not able to hide the scroll bar...

Source/context

I would like to change it to use the same tense (some kind of past) in the entire sentence:

I happened to try the above solutions in my project and for some reason I was not able to hide the scroll bar...

or

I happen to tried the above solutions in my project and for some reason I was not able to hide the scroll bar...

But both seem awkward. Is one of them grammatical? What could be an alternative? --Mortense (talk) 12:59, 10 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The first sentence is actually kind of awkward, since the first clause is in a kind of generic floating historical present ("I happen"), while the second clause refers to one specific past time ("I was"). The second sentence doesn't have this problem. The third sentence is rather strange, since "to tried" is a construction which simply doesn't exist in the English language (there is a perfective infinitive "to have tried"). AnonMoos (talk) 13:24, 10 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that "I happened to try ..." is the idiomatic phrasing. Deor (talk) 18:16, 10 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Or just leave out that "happen to" thing altogether and just say "I tried..." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:20, 11 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with Bugs, unless you feel it's important to note the happenstance of the event. If that's the case, "I happened to try..." is the only one that's correct. Matt Deres (talk) 15:22, 11 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, #2 is idiomatic while #1 and #3 are ungrammatical. Per Bugs and Matt, I'd leave it out unless there is a good reason to leave it in. 67.164.113.165 (talk) 07:12, 12 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]