These questions ask you to complete sentences built on verbs that never change their spelling, to judge such sentences, or to pick every verb that belongs to the group. Every temptation in the topic pulls the same way: towards adding something — an ending, a vowel change, or a form borrowed from a verb that merely looks related.
One spelling, three jobs
For this group the base form, the past simple and the past participle are the same spelling. The three slots have not disappeared; the verb has simply stopped signalling which one it fills. A perfect auxiliary in front of it — has, have or had, and has been or have been for a passive — makes it a participle. No auxiliary, plus a finished time reference, makes it a past simple. Only the -ing form still takes an ending, and it still needs a form of be beside it.
Reading these sentences is therefore a two-step job. First find the evidence: is there an auxiliary, and is there a time reference? Then write the verb exactly as you were given it, adding nothing. Answers go wrong here not because the form is difficult, but because an unchanged spelling looks like an oversight and invites a correction that was never needed.
| Evidence in the sentence | Which slot is filled |
|---|---|
| has, have or had immediately before the verb | The past participle, spelled like the base. |
| has been or have been before the verb | The participle inside a passive, still spelled like the base. |
| no auxiliary, and a closed time reference such as last Tuesday or two weeks ago | The past simple, also spelled like the base. |
| a form of be and an action still running | The -ing form — the one place in this group where an ending appears. |
Where the mistakes come from
| What tempts you | Why it is wrong |
|---|---|
| setted, shutted, letted, putted | The regular ending on verbs that have never taken it. None of these spellings is an English word, and putted belongs only to the separate golf verb putt, never to the verb about placing something. |
| sat, offered where a date is being fixed | A past form borrowed from a different verb altogether — the one about taking a seat, whose past simple and participle are both sat. A short, blunt verb about deciding a deadline has no claim on it. |
| costed | A real word, but only in the accounting sense of working out a budget in advance, as when a project is costed at two million. It is not available for the price a buyer actually paid, where the verb does not change. |
| taking any short verb for an unchanging one | sit and meet are the standing counter-examples: sat and met serve as their past simple and their participle, matching each other but not the base. Membership of the unchanging group is learned verb by verb, and the shape of the word does not decide it. |
| reading an unchanged verb as a present tense | These verbs say nothing about time by themselves, so the auxiliary or the time reference is the only evidence there is. An unchanged verb in a clause about last week is a past simple, not a slip of the pen. |
One last point about the participle. When the spelling cannot show you the slot, only the auxiliary can: a verb standing after has never is a participle, and the same word after a plain subject with a past date beside it is a past simple. The word itself does not care which it is; the sentence does, and so does the question.
Try it
Complete the sentence with the correct form of the verb in brackets: "The rumour ____ (spread) through the whole office before lunch yesterday."
Select every verb below whose past simple and past participle are both spelled exactly like the base form.
- hit
- hold
- bet
- hurt
- win
- split
Which sentence uses a form of quit, cut or split correctly?
- The gardener cutted the hedge last Saturday morning.
- He has splitted the logs for the fire.
- She quit the course after two difficult weeks.