Because it is conventional to write about literature in the present tense (see L4-b) and because literary works often use other tenses, you will need to exercise some care when weaving quotations into your own writing. One student’s first draft of a paper on Nadine Gordimer’s short story “Friday’s Footprint” included the following awkward sentence, in which the present-tense main verb sees is followed by the past-tense verb blushed in the quotation.
tense shift
When Rita sees Johnny’s relaxed attitude, “she blushed, like a wave of illness” (159).
When revising, the writer considered two ways to avoid the distracting shift from present to past tense: to paraphrase the reference to Rita’s blushing and reduce the length of the quotation or to change the verb in the quotation to the present tense, using brackets to indicate the change.
revision 1
When Rita sees Johnny’s relaxed attitude, she is overcome with embarrassment, “like a wave of illness” (159).
revision 2
When Rita sees Johnny’s relaxed attitude, “she blushe[s], like a wave of illness” (159).
Using brackets around just one letter of a word can seem fussy, so the writer chose the first revision. (See also L5-d.)