Discussion Groups / English Usage / February 2010

I don't think "was" is necessary. "Used to" already means "in the
past" (colloquially)

It is different - the meanings are as you say. I'd say "be" is just
plain wrong.

Imprecision seems a greater problem than language.  It may help
to know first:
1 -- the date of "formerly," e.g. 1975, 1950, 1875.
2 -- the business context, e.g. buying a pound of potatos or
buying a car or borrowing $1 million from J.P. Morgan.

It may help to rephrase affirmatively, rather than saying:
Value V is a thing which is/was not XYZ.  In all three versions
above, correct grammar says unambiguously that courtesy
has increased, but the complex sentence structure obscures
this meaning.  Putting the word "courtesy" first emphasizes
its importance, as the variants demonstrate the writer wants:
but "routinely" may be not quite the right word for the
universality of the change perceived.

(All these linguistic considerations are independent of
the historical accuracy of the observation, surprising to me.)

I would say "was" if it were clear that I was describing a period in
the past, or I wanted to imply that courtesy no longer existed.   I
would say "is" if I were talking about courtesy in general.

"To be" is an infinitive, "being" is a verbal noun.  The idioms "to
use [to-infinitive]" (now defective as to tense) and "to be used to
[noun]" mean different things.  I would not use "be" in your third
example, where the idiom calls for a noun (or verbal noun) complement.
The same thing goes for the variant with "accustomed", IMO.  The "to"
in both these cases is a preposition requiring an object, not the "to"
that introduces an infinitive.

To my ear, the tense focuses the meaning significantly here.  #1, by
being placed in the present, suggests that the change is recent, and
perhaps that the whole idea of courtesy in business might be entirely
new.  #2 just describes the state of affairs in the past, and the change
may have occurred immediately after the time it's talking about.

 Courtesy is not something people used to be shown, but they are now.

 Courtesy was not something people used to be shown, but then they
 started to demand it.

¬R      There's really no such thing as a Loser's Club.  --Spot
http://users.bestweb.net/~notr/emopvere.html     Sorry!    1019

Marius Hancu asks about:

Both are correct, but they mean different things.  In 1, the implication
is that the situation has changed recently.  In 2, it changed in the past
(before the time you're primarily talking about).  It's similar to:

1A: "People were not shown courtesy ..."
2A: "People had not been shown courtesy ..."

It has to be "being".  As you say, the meaning is similar to 2 except
that 3 talks about people's reactions instead of the courtesy itself.