<p>28 (A. Of ancient origin), the game of checkers (B.was played) in Egypt (C. during the time) of the pharaohs and (D. is mentioned) in the writings of Homer and Plato. No error</p>
<p>The answer is no error, but why is it "is mentioned" instead of "was mentioned". How can i differentiate which tense is correct in this sentence? I thought it would make more sense to use the past tense "was" since the rest of the sentence is written in past tense.</p>
<p>Always keep in mind that your job is to identify ‘errors’, not to identify cases in which different wording might be ‘better’.</p>
<p>The sentence makes sense as is and is error free. That it might make “more sense” if worded differently is not relevant. </p>
<p>It is customary in English to refer to written material in the present tense. So we write things like “Milton was Cromwell’s Latin secretary” but “In Areopagitica, Milton defends freedom of expression.”</p>
<p>@YZamyatin Thank you that makes sense. I noticed that a few of my mistakes in the writing section are because I look for a different wording that might be better.</p>
<p>@WasatchWriter Thank you so much. I didn’t know that that was a rule.</p>
<p>It’s more of a convention. It’s used widely, but there are exceptions. For example, scholarly papers written in the physical sciences tend to cite prior studies in the past tense. (But you don’t need to worry about that for the SAT.)</p>