What is "historical present"

n. the use of the present tense to describe past actions or states

In linguistics and rhetoric, the historical present or historic present (also called dramatic present or narrative present) is the employment of the present tense when narrating past events. It is widely used in writing about history in Latin (where it is sometimes referred to by its Latin name, praesens historicum) and some modern European languages; in English it is used above all in historical chronicles (listing a series of events); it is also used in fiction, for "hot news" (as in headlines), and in everyday conversation (Huddleston & Pullum 2002: 129–131). In conversation, it is particularly common with "verbs of communication" such as tell, write, and say (and in colloquial uses, go) (Leech 2002: 7). "Historic present" is the form recognised by the Oxford English Dictionary, whereas "historical present" is the form in Merriam Webster.

More recently, analysts of its use in conversation have argued that it functions not by making an event present, but by marking segments of a narrative, foregrounding events (that is, signalling that one event is particularly important, relevant to others) and marking a shift to evaluation (Brinton 1992: 221).