[marla-lesage Posts: 383 Status: Offline Write. Illustrate. Revise.]

My ms is in past tense with the line "it's never been sheared."
Someone pointed out "it's" is present tense. Can I say "it'd" instead?
I've come up with another way to write the sentence, but keeping the current form allows the preceding line to be more expressive. : So bushy! So bold! And it's never been sheared! Vs It was bushy and bold and had never been sheared.
It works, just seems less interesting? Or am I attached to my lines?
Oh the agony!

[JodyJS Posts: 1,319 Status: Offline Available for preorder! Out 12/12/23]

Lol, Marla!

I think it'd works fine. I like the version with the exclamation points!!!!

[JulieM Posts: 995 Status: Offline]

"It's" can also be a shortened version of "it has", which is past tense, so I think "it's" works fine too.
I was wondering, though, whether it should be "shorn" instead of "sheared". Apparently it may depend what you are referring to - ie what has been sheared/shorn. Sheared is for sheep, shorn is for other? I only had a quick peek, but I was looking at this web site:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sheared?s=t

The plot thickens...best of luck!

[Pons Posts: 2,482 Status: Offline]

Yes, your sentence is fine as it stands. As poster #2 said, in this case "it's" stands for" it has." "It has never been sheared" is one of the perfect tenses, which means the action happened in the past.

[DellaRF Posts: 1,594 Status: Offline website: www.DellaRossFereri.com Twitter: @DellaRF]

What about....

So bushy! So bold! And never been sheared!

[lauriew Posts: 154 Status: Offline]

I'd add a had. "And had never been sheared."