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I am preparing a book for publication which contains the following passage:

Stromberg in Religious Liberalism in Eighteenth-Century England (1954) noted that 'the critical moment in the emergence of a positive spirit of reform...consisted in the awareness of evil as being social and remediable. It begins about 1750.'

My proof reader (my wife) has picked this out suggesting it should be the past tense. However if I say It began about 1750 it seems to convey too much certainty about the exact date. I just want to convey an impression of it being something which emerges in the mid-eighteenth century. I believe use of the present tense is the way to go.

But what is this artifice called, this use of the present to convey mild uncertainty?

WS2
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    Why do you believe that about doesn't give you the vagueness you seek? – bib Feb 16 '16 at 13:11
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    Your proofreader might have missed the closing quotation mark. :) – TimR Feb 16 '16 at 13:47
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    I don't think there's any hint of uncertainty in the tense. – TimR Feb 16 '16 at 13:56
  • @Tim Romano Not uncertainty as to fact, but vagueness as to exact timing. – WS2 Feb 16 '16 at 18:36
  • @WS2: I don't think there's any vagueness or uncertainty in the tense. There's no coloration in that regard versus the simple past. Compare: "Washington's troops suffer terribly in the freezing cold at Valley Forge." or "It begins on October 29, 1929 with the collapse of the stock market." – TimR Feb 16 '16 at 18:54
  • To convey a sense of uncertainty, you should probably 1) get rid of the phrase "critical moment" (which admittedly is not your phrase, but it undermines your intention so it seems like you need to deal with it), and 2) just say something like "this transition began in the mid-eighteenth century." – Ken Williams Feb 16 '16 at 19:27
  • @KenWilliams The date given has no bearing on the critical moment. The latter describes the point at which a positive spirit of reform occurs i.e. when the awareness of evil as being social and remedial happens. Critical moment would still have been appropriately used, had no date been proposed. – WS2 Feb 16 '16 at 22:24
  • @WS2 [Part of] what I mean is that moments don't begin, they occur. They are instants, not periods with durations. Periods begin. I got pretty confused by this, because I assumed your "it" refers to "the critical moment" and it seems a mismatch to say a moment begins. That's why I changed "it" to "this transition" - a transition can have a beginning and an end. – Ken Williams Feb 16 '16 at 22:32
  • @TimRomano I'm beginning to think there is something in what you are saying here - and that it is simply a dramatic artifice. But it does seem to tone down what might appear an excess of dogmatism. To me it is the difference between stating something and suggesting something. What do you think it does? – WS2 Feb 16 '16 at 22:35
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    @KenWilliams As you rightly point out, this is not my work, but that of an author called Stromberg. I think there is no doubt that begins is apt, because it will not have been something that happened across society in a moment. The whole is in quotation marks in my piece, so I do not intend to change what he said. But I do see what you mean, and it may have been better had he said the transition begins. But I defend his use of moment as metaphorical. Clearly it didn't happen in an instant. – WS2 Feb 16 '16 at 22:54
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    I don't think the historical present casts things in a tentative light, at least not in historical narratives in academic style. It confers a kind of immediacy upon the past event; it is a sort of reportage that puts the audience there at the scene, so to speak, as events unfold. In literary works it can produce an entirely different effect, a kind of liminal state or dreaminess in which the narrator "disappears" and the events seem to take on a life of their own, as a tableau vivant. – TimR Feb 16 '16 at 22:55
  • @TimRomano Very interesting, though it is not entirely how I see it. I am wondering if this has been discussed as a question here. – WS2 Feb 16 '16 at 23:01
  • This seems an exact duplicate of 'What is the term called for writing in present tense even though the text is in past tense?', though the term 'historic present' isn't given there. That thread itself was closed as a duplicate. – Edwin Ashworth Mar 13 '17 at 20:40

1 Answers1

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This is called the historic present. It is also called historical present, dramatic present, narrative present, or praesens historicum in Latin. It is a perfectly fine construction, although it should be used in moderation so as not to draw the ire of style books.

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