What is the difference in meaning in these two sentences?
He is appointed as Manager.
and
He has been appointed as Manager.
Similarly, what is the difference between these two sentences?
Amount has been paid to you as basic salary.
and
Amount is paid to you as basic salary.
Best Answer
For all practical purposes, there's really not much difference in meaning. Either one could be used to announce the appointment of a new manager.
Let's assume we appoint Renee as the manager today. Our Regional Director comes into the office to make the announcement:
Tomorrow, an absent co-worker comes into work, and asks:
(This co-worker uses the past tense, because the appointment happened yesterday). I might reply:
So, why didn't I say, "Renee was appointed as the manager" instead? Because Renee is still the manager! I could use was – it wouldn't be incorrect – but it might lead to some confusion. I can imagine my co-worker saying:
The further the event moves into the past, though, the more natural was will sound, because we're talking about an historical event, rather than a current event. Imagine we fast-forward two years into the future, and I am training a brand-new employee:
Renee's appointment is no longer a current event, so "has been" doesn't sound right in that context.
This looks a lot like the present perfect continuous tense, except that tense uses a verb that ends with -ing:
I'm don't think your sentence is quite the same thing, though, because of how we'd parse your original sentence. It's not:
but:
So, we're really dealing with passive voice here, not the present perfect continuous tense. In active voice, we would say:
or, the Regional Director might say: