Historical present


In linguistics and rhetoric, the historical present or historic present, also called dramatic present or narrative present, is the employment of the present tense when narrating past events. It is widely used in writing about history in Latin and some modern European languages. In English, it is used above all in historical chronicles. It is also used in fiction, for "hot news", and in everyday conversation. In conversation, it is particularly common with quotative verbs such as say and go, and especially the newer quotative like. It is typically thought to heighten the dramatic force of the narrative by describing events as if they were still unfolding, and/or by foregrounding some events relative to others.

Examples

In an excerpt from Dickens' David Copperfield, the shift from the past tense to the historical present gives a sense of immediacy, as of a recurring vision:
Notable novels written entirely in the historical present include John Updike's Rabbit, Run and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.

In describing fiction

Summaries of the narratives of works of fiction are conventionally presented using the present tense rather than the past tense. At any particular point of the story, as it unfolds, there is a now, and hence a past and a future, so whether some event mentioned in the story is past, present, or, future changes as the story progresses; the entire plot description is presented as if the story's now were a continuous present. Thus, in summarizing the plot of A Tale of Two Cities, one may write:

In other languages

In French, the historical present is used in journalism, and in historical texts for reporting events in the past.
The now extinct language Shasta appears to have had the option of the historical present in narratives.
The New Testament, written in koine Greek in the first century AD, is notable for use of the historical present, particularly in the Gospel of Mark.