Automattic / Automattic/harper

Verb tense agreement/consistency

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agreement enhancement grammar harper-core linting
Dominant language
Rust
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Description

## Description

Harper does not detect that verb tense usage is consistent and in agreement with the rest of the sentence.

## Resources

These links provides several good examples and explanations: [https://nmu.edu/writingcenter/tenses](https://nmu.edu/writingcenter/tenses) [https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/grammar/verb_tenses/verb_tense_consistency.html](https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/grammar/verb_tenses/verb_tense_consistency.html)

## Examples

The brown fox will ran thru the meadow. "will" and "ran" are not in agreement.

About noon the sky darkened, a breeze sprang up, and a low rumble announces the approaching storm. "darkened" and "sprang" are past tense, "announces" is present tense.

When the show ended, the audience leaves the theater. "ended" and "leaves" are not in agreement.

## Not related
Harper is fantastic, I love it!

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

Start by reviewing the Harper grammar checker and the linked verb-tense references, then use the three examples in the issue as the initial cases to investigate. Done means Harper flags inconsistent tense usage, including the auxiliary and verb mismatch in “will ran,” without flagging the unrelated text.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
rust
Domain
devtools
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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