This tense indicates that the statement is generally true in the past, present, and future. Simple present: Use the simple present to describe a general truth or a habitual action. Grammar choices for graduate and professional writers. Longman grammar of written and spoken English. The next most common tense for capstone writers is the future the doctoral study/dissertation proposal at Walden is written in this tense for a study that will be conducted in the future.īiber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., & Finegan, E. According to corpus research, in academic writing, the three tenses used the most often are the simple present, the simple past, and the present perfect (Biber et al., 1999 Caplan, 2012).