Learning proper English grammar makes my head hurt. It’s confusing and once you think you’ve learned the rules, some punctuation God gives a ‘get out of Hades card.” And ta da—now you have to remember the exceptions too. Knowing this hasn’t stopped me from trying to learn but I must do so in small doses.
Very small doses.
This week’s migraine was brought to you by Passed and Past.
I started out slowly. Both passed and past are relatives of pass. Got that. Then things popped up like transitive, intransitive and participle. I break into a sweat and my brain starts pounding at the back of my skull trying to escape.
High school English gave me PTSD.
Once my heart settled below 150 beats per minute, I fell back on my old coping mechanisms: To understand the message, I’d ignore some words. The gist of what I learned is this—passed is a verb and past is everything else (noun, preposition and adverb).
Passed should be used as the past tense of the verb pass (There is an exception created by the Navy, but I’m not going to repeat it here as it borders on cruel and unusual punishment).
Correct: I passed my exam with flying colors.
Incorrect: I past my exam with flying colors.
Correct: We passed her house on the way to school.
Incorrect: Dinner is served promptly at half passed one.
Correct: Dinner is served promptly at half past one.
Correct: In the past, people would have to pound clothes against rocks to get them clean.
Correct: He raced past the finish line.
Check that you are using passed as the verb by rewriting into present tense—I’m passing my exam with flying colors and I pass her house on the way to school.
To double check past rewrite by substituting beyond in its place—He raced beyond the finish line and Dinner is served halfway beyond one.
Now off to take a Tylenol.