Quote:
But what is the importance of "at that very moment
yeah it is important. in fact without this phrase i wouldn't have been able to decide between
"was fashioning" AND
"had been fashioning" . the reasoning is as follows:
as i have said in reported speech the tenses makes a usual jump. now that is a very crude way of saying but what does that actually mean?
suppose i met the governor and he said following thing to me:
"at that very moment, his team is fashioning...." then that would become in reported speech as
"at that very moment, his team was fashioning...."-----> now the important role that the phrase
"at that very moment" is playing is that it is guiding me to the fact that the manager was talking in
present progressive tense. without this phrase i am left to a possibility that he might be talking in
"past progressive", in that case my reported speech would have been
"had been fashioning ......"NOW the important point is has GMAC ever tested such constructions? i do not remember any official problem that has tested such a nuance.
i will appreciate if the makers of this question (MIKE & TEAM) can chime in to further elaborate.