<p>Hi, I wanted to ask: When are the only times when you could put a past tense verb and a present tense verb in the same sentence? Please explain. Thanks!</p>
<p>You really should never combine the two tenses, in fact, that is a common topic asked on the writing sections. Never put two different tenses together, try to keep whatever tense isn't underlined.</p>
<p>Thanks for the quick reply. Another question: How can we know if a parallelism in prepositions is implied? (For example, "He went to eat, drive, and play." -- meaning "He went to eat, to drive, and to play." Thanks.</p>
<p>I think the second one may be correct because try to read the first one by removing each one. It doesn't make sense. I could be wrong though.</p>
<p>Doesn't matter, as long as they are used constantly. However, you cannot say, "He went to eat, drive, and to play."</p>
<p>Repeating the "to" in each item in a list is grammatically OK, but stylistically redundant. Your first example is stylistically better: the "to" applies to all three items in the list, so it's fine. "He went to"...do 3 things. So, if you have a choice, pick "He went to eat, drive, and play." If you don't have that as an option, then "He went to eat, to drive, and to play" is acceptable.</p>
<p>How about for non-lists? For example, "He chose to play rather than study." instead of "He chose to play rather than to study."
Does this work also? Please explain. Thanks again!</p>
<p>The second one is corerct. That is parallelism at its finest :D.</p>