: How would I keep using past tense with resulting actions I'm having trouble figuring out which form is the past tense for sentences like these. For each example, which would be correct? Or

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The crowd shoved him up against the wall.
The crowd was shoving him up against the wall.

I prefer the first.

Here's the definitive answer to the difference between verbs which end in ed versus verbs ending in ing.
www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/verb-tenses-adding-ed-and-ing
The short of it is:
verbs ending in ed is the past tense verb

verbs ending in the ing is the present participle

I believe at times a writer may prefer the ing because it makes her (think her) writing sound more like it is happening in the present.

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Writer Preference

Both ways are correct. In your first example, 'smashing it like an egg' is a dependent clause. The second line converts it to a compound verb and an adverb clause. In your second example, both versions use the conjunction 'and' to join two independent clauses.

In cases like these, it is purely a matter of which version you think sounds better and contributes more to what you are writing.

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Both are correct. There is more than one way to form the past tense in English.

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