In 1860, the Philological Society launched its effort to create a dictionary more comprehensive than the world had ever seen; although the project would take more than 60 years to complete, the Oxford English Dictionary had been born.

A. would take more than 60 years to complete, the Oxford English Dictionary had been
B. took more than 60 years to complete, the Oxford English Dictionary was
C. would take more than 60 years to complete, the Oxford English Dictionary was being
D. would take more than 60 years to complete, the Oxford English Dictionary was
E. took more than 60 years to complete, the Oxford English Dictionary was about to be


Explanation from answer key: The past perfect ("had been born") is used when there are two past actions and we want to indicate which one happened first. In the underlined portion of the sentence, however, the other verb, "would take," is not in the past tense, so we need to use the simple past "was born." (Remember that we always use the most simple tenses allowed; the perfect tenses, and other complicated tenses, are used only when required by the sentence structure.) The second half of the sentence stands in contrast to the first half, in which the simple past "launched" is correctly paired with the past perfect "had seen."

(D) CORRECT. This choice correctly uses the simple past "was born." A more complicated past tense is not required because the other verb "would take," is not in the past tense .

I'm confused about the explanation in (D). I thought "would" is a past tense? I chose (B).

Nope, "would" does not indicate past tense. It's technically a future tense. This is a complicated structure.

Basically, "the project would take" is stated as though the person saying the sentence is back in 1860, looking forward to the future completion of the dictionary. From 1860's point of view, the completion will occur in the future, but the dictionary was (just) launched in the past. (And how do I know this is the proper viewpoint? I always follow the original meaning of the sentence, unless there is something logically wrong with that meaning.)

Note that the first half of the sentence (before the semi-colon) does show proper construction of past perfect. There, we have "launched" and "had seen" - the world hadn't seen something and then something was launched.