by Jennie Ruby
Note: Asterisks indicate a grammatically incorrect sentence.
Good grammar is often seen as a sign of a good education, and one of the points of grammar that parents and teachers emphasize in this regard is the correct use of the past participle. Where I grew up in rural Maryland, we tended to say things like *"Have you ate lunch yet?"* and *"Have you ever went to that theater?"* Of course, teachers and parents corrected us: have you eaten and have you gone.
I had a flashback to that time recently when I was teaching a group of science editors and they asked me whether proved or proven was the correct past participle in a sentence such as "This treatment has proved/proven effective." At first, I did not know the answer. But of course I had grammar and usage books with me, and I quickly found that proven should be used as an adjective and proved should be used as a verb, like this:
This treatment has proved effective.
The proven treatment is used most often.
The reason I did not immediately know the answer, and the reason that teachers and parents have to constantly remind children of the correct form for these words, is that
prove, eat, and go are irregular verbs. If you ever studied another language such as French or Spanish in school, you may remember spending a lot of time memorizing the irregular verbs. They have to be memorized in English as well.
The irregular verbs are difficult to learn simply because they do not follow the normal pattern of English verbs. Regular verbs follow the pattern of adding -ed to create the past and the past participle (used with have or has) forms, like this: walk, walked, have walked. Irregular verbs have different spellings in the past and past participle forms: eat, ate, has eaten; go, went, has gone.
Adding to the confusion surrounding irregular verbs is the fact that British and American usage differ on some, such as get, got, has gotten (American) vs. get, got, has got (British). Further, over time, some irregular forms fall into disuse, like cleave, clove, has cloven. Nobody says it that way any more, so the correct use today is regular: cleave, cleaved, has cleaved. But the old word cloven is still used as an adjective, as in the phrase "some animals have cloven hooves."
What about strive? I have two grammar books in front of me. One says strive is irregular: strive, strove, has striven. The other simply does not list it as irregular, leaving us to believe it is regular: strive, strived, has strived. What is a writer to do? Even though there are variations on what is correct, the best strategy is to choose your favorite grammar or style book and follow its recommendations for the forms of irregular verbs.
About the Author: Jennie Ruby is a veteran IconLogic trainer and author with titles such as "Essentials of Access 2000" and "Editing with MS Word 2003 and Adobe Acrobat 7" to her credit. Jennie specializes in electronic editing. At the American Psychological Association, she was manager of electronic publishing and manager of technical editing and journal production. Jennie has an M.A. from George Washington University and is a Certified Technical Trainer (Chauncey Group). She is a publishing professional with 20 years of experience in writing, editing and desktop publishing.
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