I've read a number of questions here on SE English as well as from Google searches, however I'm still unclear on something.
Consider the following:
Alice walked carefully along the uneven lawn, making sure to keep her ankle straight.
Bob felt as if he was forgetting something as the bus stopped at the curb.
I'm confident these are both correctly conjugated, but as a native English speaker I also know I have a lifetime of repeating the same mistakes over and over again.
The question is why is it that these two are both correct despite one mixing tenses, and what "test" can be used to determine such things?
Some things I read before asking this:
- Can you use past and present tense in the same sentence?
- Quora: Is it okay to have present tense and past tense in the same sentence?
- tenseconsistency.htm
- Daily Writing Tips: 5 Lessons for Mixing Past and Present Tense
I've read more, but I'd rather not fish through my history just to show that I'm not just asking due to being lazy.