Have you noticed the strange fact that news reports are written in past tense and news headlines in simple present tense?
There is, of course, nothing strange about it. This is how newspapers report an event, and have been reporting it ever since their evolution.
The reason most news reports are written in the past tense is because they describe events that have already occurred. Events that are scheduled to happen in the future use future tense.
Headlines, in contrast, provide an element of freshness. You don’t feel that you are reading stale news – news about an event that has occurred a day ago.
Instead, there is immediacy because the present tense is quick and current, and emphasises the action as it happens, rather than its completion.
Another way of explaining this is that the newspapers are not trying to communicate the time of the event. They only want to make a past event more current.
Examples of how this is done
In the lead below, weakened, which is the past tense form of the verb weaken, was used by the reporter to describe the fall of the rupee against dollar.
In contrast, the headline uses the present tense form of the verbs follow and hits.
Headline: Rupee follows global slide, hits all-time low against dollar
Lead: NEW DELHI: The rupee weakened 90 paise against dollar and closed at a record low of 58.77 on Tuesday.
Here’s another example of the way verbs are used in newspapers.
Headline: Delhi records season’s lowest temperature
Lead: NEW DELHI: Delhi recorded its lowest temperature of the season.
Related reports
5 trusted to rules to follow while writing headlines
How to use punctuation marks in headlines
I like that newspapers do this because it subtly reinforces the fact that no matter what it is always now.