Welcome to the Grammar Minute, where we’re saving the English language sixty seconds at a time! I’m Lauren Smyth, and I came across a research paper recently that made an interesting claim: A political candidate’s use or abuse of grammar may have some bearing on whether they get elected.

It’s presidential primary season in my part of the world, so everyone’s heading to the ballot boxes (and if you’re not, you should be). The subject of this research paper from 2011 was the effect different verb tenses had on a voter’s perception of whether a candidate would be reelected. A candidate’s past activities were described with perfective “ed” verbs, like “served” and “worked,” and imperfective “ing” verbs, like “was serving” and “was working.” It turns out that any activity described using imperfective verbs, whether negative or positive, had a greater influence on study participants’ judgments than actions described with perfective verbs.

There’s today’s plug for why grammar might be important. If you want to get elected, maybe you should talk about all the great things you were doing—not what you did.

That’s your Grammar Minute! Visit thegrammarminute.com for more tips and tricks.