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I'm wondering what is difference between these both?

She has been banned

and

She is banned

Indra Uchiha
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1 Answers1

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I would normally read those two phrases to mean the same thing, but they are slightly different. "She is banned" means that the person is currently in a state of being being banned. "She has been banned" implies the same thing, but could refer to the act of being banned at a certain point in time. That is, the ban could have expired or have been revoked at a later time.

Mark Nugent
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  • In my neck of the woods, "she has been banned" cannot possibly be used if the ban is no longer in place. Only "she was banned" can. – RegDwigнt Oct 24 '14 at 14:05
  • I'm thinking of uses like this: "Mark Twain’s most famous work, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, has been banned in classrooms and libraries since its first year of American publication, 1885." Obviously all of those bans are not currently in place. http://www.enotes.com/topics/mark-twain – Mark Nugent Oct 24 '14 at 14:16
  • Oh. Yes, you are right of course. The thing is, in that case "is banned" is not even an option. So OP's situation is apparently quite different. – RegDwigнt Oct 24 '14 at 14:40
  • So, there must be a specific time, situation and place when you want to use "is banned". – Indra Uchiha Oct 24 '14 at 14:43
  • @RegDwigнt OK, I was reading the OP's cases as isolated phrases rather than, you know, complete statements but your reading is probably more accurate. – Mark Nugent Oct 24 '14 at 14:59
  • @RegDwigнt - We can "Proof the rule" but offering a challenge to it. The phrases "has been banned twice" or "has been counseled" seem to contradict RegDwight's interpretation. But on further examination they verify it. Usages of "has been" that are not continuous to the present have an explicit or implicit instance count ( "Banned twice" or "Counseled {once/on occasion/etc..}" ). A better term to express that a state existed, then ended, is "had been". – H.R.Rambler Oct 24 '14 at 18:50
  • @H.R.Rambler yes, it's just that I would hazard the guess that for OP's needs at their level, even just the basic How do the tenses and aspects in English correspond temporally to one another? linked by choster is not just a good start, but indeed perfectly sufficient. And of course we have tons of further reading under the Present Perfect tag and whatnot. – RegDwigнt Oct 24 '14 at 18:59
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    @RegDwigнt I can deal with that. Even though I'm disappointed to trashcan an answer I started before the thread got locked. :-) To the point at hand through; as a person who professionally enforces bans and blocks, I would point out that some states have an active sense that "solved" does not. That activeness of "maintaining a ban" has a psychological implications. Hazarding a guess for the OP's needs... they can keep themselves out of arguments on a daily basis if they know whether they are conveying personal or institutional authority by telling a peer/superior something "is banned". – H.R.Rambler Oct 24 '14 at 19:22
  • @H.R.Rambler yes, the trashcanning is a nuisance. My understanding is that there's a grace period during which you can still post what you've already started, but the powers that be seem to change it back and forth now and then, and I am indeed not up to date on the current threshold. Sorry for that! – RegDwigнt Oct 24 '14 at 19:51