[Grammar] Is planned or has been planned?

[Anayu]

Which version is correct or sounds better:

1) Is the review planned?
2) Has the review been planned?

Personally I would always choose 2), but my colleagues keep on using 1). Same for examples like "Is the list defined?" "Are the criteria defined?", when I would always say "Has the list been defined?" and "Have the criteria been defined?". I could not find a clear rule which version to use.

 

[jutfrank]

We need to more about the meaning of the question before we can comment on why one version could be better than the other. What's the situation? Who is speaking to whom? What's the review? Whose job is it to plan the review? What does the asker really want to know? Tell us as much about the use as you can.

 

[Anayu]

Thank you for your reply and I will try to explain the situation. The questions are all contained in a checklist that my colleagues -none of them native English speakers- created and that is to be used to check if the work products or tasks required by the work process have been created or completed. There is no conversation, only the checklist document that will be used by the responsible persons. ALL of the questions are in simple present tense, here some more examples:

-Is the responsible person assigned? => I would say "Has the responsible person been assigned?"
-Is the guideline described or referenced? => I would say "Has the guideline been created or referenced?"
-Is the testing strategy defined? => I would say "Has the testing strategy been defined?"

There is probably no specific reason at all why they choose simple present tense in these questions other than that they thought that this is a good and correct way to express themselves, they are not native speakers. It is my job now to check this list for language related errors and to me asking these questions in simple present tense sounds very strange and I would not use it for these questions. But I am not a native speaker, either, and so far I have not been able to find any rules that I could give as reason why I would not use simple present tense. But I don't want to change anything that sounds only strange to me, but is not really incorrect.

 

[bhaisahab]

I agree with your suggestions.