To get annoyed about use of present tense in TV (historical) documentaries?

[pearlkent]

This has been bugging me for a few years now and it's become epidemic.
In any TV programme talking about the past (eg. last night that one about tracing family history in the Liverpool house) the experts/narrators ALWAYS speak in the present tense - eg. "war breaks out" instead of "war broke out". It's confusing and grammatically wrong surely?
I can only assume it's to make the subject more "interesting/appealing" but it really grates on me.

I think I love you pearl, I've been ranting about this for years

I don't watch much TV but I hate hate hate present tense in books. I don't buy books now until I've used Look Inside or another preview to check they're in past.

Yes, yes, yes!! I agree, OP, it's massively annoying and, for me, distracts from the programme. (Well, perhaps that's because I'm shouting "Broke out, war BROKE out!" etc at the TV!). I think it's really dumbing down otherwise excellent documentaries.

I can't see how it's dumbing down, surely people are equally capable of understand present and past tense. Surely it's just to try and set a scene and make you feel like you're in that moment of history?

Me too. I hate it when Lucy Worsley et al says "Queen Elizabeth loves eating pears" or "she loves walking around the ground of Hatfield House" or whatever. She lived over 450 years ago! OH and I grumble about it all the time.

They do it a lot on radio 4 too and it drives me round the bend.

Spam88 I think it is because it is more anecdotal than factual. Yes, probably to set the scene, as you say, in a story telling sense, rather than just present the facts.

*presenting

I believe its called the 'historical present'.
A lot of things get on my nerves but that isn't one of them.

YANBU at all OP it is horrific.

YANBU
It's supposed to make it more engaging but it is bloody stupid. Anything that does this gets immediately switched off by me. Proper historians do not do this (unless forced to, and even then they slip back into past tense half the time).

Horrific it may be, but modern? Historical present is common in Classical historical writing. You can like it or dislike it, but there's nothing modern about it.

oooh yes www.englishforums.com/English/PresentTenseForPastTime/3/nlmmk/post.htm

I think the historical present can be very effective, but like any rhetorical device a) you need to know what you're doing with it and b) it's best employed sparingly. Overuse or inappropriate use of it is one of the most common things that I end up correcting in the upper quarter of the undergraduate essays I mark; it seems to be particularly beloved of the really good students, possibly because they're more likely to watch documentaries!

common in Classical historical writing

Do you mean Greek or some such? I have never seen it in academic writing.

Yes, it's the historical present. A perfectly acceptable literary device, though it does seem to annoy some people.

If the funeral had been yesterday, I could not recollect it better. The very air of the best parlour, when I went in at the door, the bright condition of the fire, the shining of the wine in the decanters, the patterns of the glasses and plates, the faint sweet smell of cake, the odour of Miss Murdstone’s dress, and our black clothes. Mr. Chillip is in the room, and comes to speak to me.

"And how is Master David?" he says, kindly.

I cannot tell him very well. I give him my hand, which he holds in his.
— Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, Chapter IX

Bastard modern trendy writing.

fiction is not history

What I really really hate is the use of actors to re-enact scenes, usually in mime and through a screen of smoke / mist with loud music.

Apparently it's widely used in Latin. I vaguely remember it from reading Caesar at O level, I think.

MargaretCavendish Fri 12-Jan-18 16:21:23

"I think the historical present can be very effective, but like any rhetorical device a) you need to know what you're doing with it and b) it's best employed sparingly."

YYY to this. It's a device you nee to understand to use it.

I don't watch much TV but I hate hate hate present tense in books

Oh god, yes!! There's an epidemic of this in fiction recently. I HATE it.

I hate 'historical present' with a passion - in the way it's being used (over-used) nowadays. It's endemic in most TV documentaries now. When I hear it being used too often, I switch channel or turn the TV off and do something else. Read a book usually - authors can speak and write English in a balanced, standard and non-annoying fashion.

As with many things like this, some people find it very annoying. I certainly do. The reason I do can be easily demonstrated via analogy...

The reason I find it annoying is because it's not quite right!! Do you know what I mean?!?! Yes!! You do, don't you!!! Are you agreeing with me!!?? It doesn't matter what words I put here!! It's all about the excessive exclamation marks!!!! By over-using a particular device - in this case (an exclamation!!), the usage becomes really, really, really, really annoying!! And - yet, syntactically, those sentences are all ok!!!! But doesn't it get annoying, all these exclamation marks?!?! It does, doesn't it, because there's just too many of them!!!! It makes me sound like a total imbecile!! With no balance or subtlety in my use of the English language!! It's very, very, very tiring!!! Constantly using a 'feature' - like an exclamation in a sentence, or a crash cymbal after EVERY drum fill, tinnitus, or, as in this case, using a current tense for a past event soon gets very tiresome - and hence annoying to (some of) those who notice it.

So documentary speakers - please: THINK, and LIMIT yourselves. Do not gorge too greedily. If you use historical tense wisely, it can serve your art. But if you just spray it around all over the place like a hose pipe that had been hidden in long grass when you raked the lawn, then (a) you don't do a very good job in your presentation, (b) you annoy parts of your potential audience needlessly, (c) you set a poor example to others and (d) you make some of your potential viewers change channel. NONE of those things apply if you simply use (99% of the time) suitable tenses. You will not annoy people or lose viewers simple for saying "He picked up the pistol - and as his wife swallowed her poison capsule, Hitler shot himself". It's already informative, accurate and historically interesting. Given the programme is a historical documentary then no amount of dubious tense choices, or other cheap trickery will prevent viewers who require more excitement from switching channel and watching Iron Man fighting with a cyber warrior from the future, or something. Although... perhaps if you add exclamations and cymbals and pauses in the middle of sentences instead of at the ends, it may?... "He picks up the pistol (CRASH!)!! As his wife swallows her poison capsule (CRASH, CRASH)... Hitler!.... shoots!!... himself (ba dum bum, ptSHHH)!!!".

But of course, it's a free world. And if this is the road that TV must travel down - well, there's plenty of books out there for me to read instead! That was my actual exclamation mark right there.

I'm a big Radio 4 listener, but for years I have had to switch off when history programmes come on for exactly this reason. I used to love In Our Time, but if it involves anything historical I just can't listen to the mangled language. The worst is when people switch back and forth between some form of past tense and historic present, sometimes in the same sentence!

It does seem to be a very basic skill of historians to be able to identify what happened in the past and what didn't!

It's not dumbing down, it's a mechanism to draw the listener in and make the story more immediate. HTH.