Narrating in present simple?

English as a Second Language English Vocabulary, Grammar and Idioms
1

I know that past simple ( in general past tenses) is used when narrating a story.

But I would like to know if we can use present simple when that statement is a general truth.

eg.

Five years ago ,I had the opportunity to visit one of the most beautiful cities in the world, which is Toronto.( Is it right in present simple or past simple?)

2
  1. The sentence can be written both ways, meaning “which is Toronto” and “which was Toronto.” The former suggests that Toronto is still beautiful, while the latter suggests that Toronto may or may not still be beautiful.
  2. I could also argue that if you are writing the text in the past tense to relay a story, then you should use the past tense throughout the text, meaning “which was Toronto.”
  3. I would not write the sentence that way and would instead use “…one of the most beautiful cities in the world, meaning Toronto” or “…one of the most beautiful cities in the world, Toronto” or even “…one of the most beautiful cities in the world: Toronto.”

Don’t know if that helps or not, but I tried.

3

thank you for replying!

4

Hi,

The problem with using your descriptive clause ‘which is/was …’ is that you are detracting from what you want to say, which is that you visited the city. It would be simpler to write the sentence whereby you put the noun ‘Toronto’ in apposition to the description ‘one of the most …world’ :

Five years ago I had the opportunity to visit one of the most beautiful cities in the world, Toronto.

Alan

5

Why not reword it like:“Five years ago I had the opportunity to visit Toronto, one of the most beautiful cities in the world.” putting stress on the name of the city?

6

OK, I’ll just rewrite it in a simpler way.