“Became” vs “become”

Question

I'm not sure about the verb tense I should use here:

Run this definition so that the previous changes become/became visible.

I think the correct one is Present Simple but it sounds better with Past Simple.

General Reference. OP's text is clearly a sentence, since it starts with a capital letter and ends with a full stop. It's irrelevant that we could grammatically include that string of words within a longer sentence such as "Did you run this definition so that the previous changes became visible?", where past tense is valid.

TheIrishGuy · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-26 14:20:23Z

up vote 4 down vote accepted

Run this definition so that the previous changes become visible.

You'd use become, the sentence is in the present tense. Became is the PAST tense.

answered Jun 26 '12 at 14:20

TheIrishGuy
30527

1

Right. All imperatives are in the present tense, by definition. – John Lawler Jun 26 '12 at 14:28

Halo · Answer 2 · 2012-06-26 18:36:46Z

up vote 1 down vote

become is used in the following context

Run this definition so that the previous changes become visible

and became is used like this :-

Ran this definition so that the previous changes became visible

answered Jun 26 '12 at 18:36

Halo
272

The latter does not make sense to me. – Carlo_R. Jun 26 '12 at 21:37

2 Answers