So, what’s the difference between the past tense and the past participle? Basically, the past tense is a tense while the past participle is a specific verb form used in the past and present perfect tenses. The past participle is not a tense. It’s a form of a verb and can’t be used on its own.

Conjugation of verb ‘Say’

The past tense of say is said or sayed (nonstandard). The third-person singular simple present indicative form of say is says. The past participle of say is said or sayed.

Adding -ing to the base form of a verb creates the present participle. For example, eat is the base form of the verb to eat. Other examples of present participles include swimming, laughing, and playing. The present participle can function as an adjective and modify nouns in sentences.

The easiest way to tell the difference between the gerund and the present participle is to look for the helping verb “be”. If you find a form of “be” followed by the -ing form, that’s the present participle. For example: They’ve have been working for four hours.

Technically, would is the past tense of will, but it is an auxiliary verb that has many uses, some of which even express the present tense.

Explanation: Past Perfect is one of English past tenses used to indicate that one of 2 past actions took place before another like in a sentence: Past Participle is one of the verb forms (usually the third form in a table of irregular verbs). It is used in perfect tenses, passive voice, etc.

Went is the past tense of go. Gone is the past participle of go.

The nine commonly used verb tenses are present, present perfect, present continuous; past, past perfect, past continuous; future, future perfect, future continuous.

Well, first of all “now” is not a verb. 🙂 It’s actually an adverb. If you want to refer to the past instead of the present you could use, “then” or “at the time.”