6. Select the best word to complete the sentence: They _______________ the incident to find the guilty. investigated investigating investigate investigates You can only choose one of the answers, but 2 of them are proper answers.
in my opinion the only way 'investigate' could be proper is if 'the' was dropped and an 's' added to 'incident'.
* * * * MODERATOR'S NOTE * * * * Here is my response to inquiries regarding the formatting error in the bulletin board engine. I have deleted all other posts on this issue to keep the thread on topic. I got your report on that. Don't worry about it, it happens all the time. The word processing component of this bulletin board engine has a few quirky features. Apparently it thinks there really is a space in there and there's no way to argue over it. You can't put in more than one space because it always condenses them back to a single. One space Two spaces Three spaces Four spaces Five spaces They all display as one space. When you're typing a reply, scroll down into the post chain and take a look at it. It's all in a different font with different formatting, and the spacing is not the same as the final display.
Investigated is clearly OK. Investigate, possibly. You could use it in a storyboard. The police are called to a man's house. They investigate the incident to find the guilty. They charge the man and his wife with the crime.
I agree. Both the present indicative and past indicative are grammatically correct. In a news report you would probably see the past tense because a "news report" by definition generally (but not always) speaks of something that has already occurred. In a textbook on civics you might see the present tense in a description of how police work is customarily performed.