Time words and phrases

Writing Tip There are a number of expressions connected with time that are more appropriate in academic writing than the simpler ones used in spoken and informal language. Read this paragraph from an economics essay and look at the words and phrases in bold that refer to the times when things happen. At that point, the worst of the economic crisis was yet to happen. Countries knew that they could not go on adding to their debt burden any longer, but paying down their debt proved to be beyond many of them. Various emergency measures were carried out but as it turned out these were to provide only temporary respite. They dealt with the immediate crisis, only to exacerbate the problems later on. During the course of the next few years, one crisis followed another. Meanwhile, unemployment was rising, as was inflation. So far, nothing had worked and the biggest crisis of all was soon to follow. Future time As well as writing about the ‘future in the present’, we also write about the ‘future in the past’. Have/be + yet/still + infinitive Used to talk about things that have not happened but might happen in the future: The full repercussions of the financial crisis haven’t been felt yet.