Learn English – Is the construction “from then on … until now” correct/idiomatic

grammarsentence-construction

Example sentence:

He had an accident. From then on, he couldn’t talk to me, nor could I listen to him
anymore. Until now.

I guess it's grammatical and idiomatic. But I'm not very sure due to the change of tense in the same paragraph.

(Or maybe a more natural construction is: From then on … And it's the same now?)

Best Answer

"From then on" indicates that the event in question is continuing, while "Until now" indicates that the event in question has had some kind of change (in this case, stopping).

Decoding the sentences from there, there was a period of time, beginning when the accident happened and ending now, that the two didn't talk to each other.

Your suggestion of replacing "Until now" with "And it's the same now" actually reverses the scenario, because "And it's the same now" indicates that the event in question is still continuing now.

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