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In this sentence,

Over the past few weeks I've been doing a lot of baking. I have made pizza, buns, cookies and banana bread. Those are my accomplishments.

would it be okay to simply say "I made" instead of "I have made"? The full sentence would be: "I made pizza, buns, cookies and banana bread."

I think the past simple form would be acceptable because you're giving details about the first sentence, which is present perfect continuous. Am I correct?

Richard Winters
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anouk
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    It would certainly be "okay"! Personally, I think it's usually best to make the *stylistic choice* to drop back to Simple Past after the first instance of Present Perfect has been used to establish "relevance to time of utterance". It's only a stylistic choice to use the Perfect form for the first reference anyway, but it rapidly starts to look clumsy if you keep repeating a more complex tense form like that. – FumbleFingers Dec 07 '21 at 17:01
  • Yes, it's perfectly fine. If you look for this construction I think you'll find its pretty common. – FeliniusRex - gone Dec 07 '21 at 17:27
  • @FumbleFingers I'd actually recommend against it. The first sentence uses the present perfect, implying that the action is ongoing, so I'd stick with that for the second sentence. If the first sentence said "I did a lot of baking", then I'd infer that the baking had ended and agree with "I made". (I know that people often differ about these issues; that's just my rationale.) – MarcInManhattan Dec 07 '21 at 20:01
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    @MarcInManhattan: The principle of "parallelism" would endorse echoing the initial verb form with *I've been making pizza, buns,...* - inclusive of the *continuous* aspect. I've no problem with that fully parallel version, though it does make the text read a bit like a child's story book (learning language through repeated complex verb structures is akin to learning arithmetic by chanting your "times tables"! :) But these are essentially stylistic choices, and unless either of us are / hope to be successful writers, it's of little consequence whether we agree on "good style"! :) – FumbleFingers Dec 08 '21 at 12:00
  • my question is more about the use of the past simple to give details about a former sentence written in present perfect, for example: "I've been on holiday. I went to France." – anouk Dec 08 '21 at 14:25

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