- Past Perfect Tense
- The structure is the following:
- Positive: Subject + had + past participle +...
- Negative: Subject + had not/ hadn't + past participle +...
- Interrogative: Had + subject + past participle +... + ?
- It is used to describe an action finished before another past action: "Richard had gone out when his wife arrived in the office"
- It is used to describe an action that happened before a specific time in the past: "Christine had never been to an opera before last night."
- To describe cause and effect (combine with Simple Past): "I got stuck in traffic because there had been an accident."
- To emphasize the result of activity in the past: "I had been to London twice by the time I got a job in New York."
- Past Perfect Progressive Tense
- The structure is the following:
- Positive: Subject + had + been + verb "ing" +...
- Negative: Subject + had not/ hadn't + been + verb "ing" +...
- Interrogative: Had + subject + been + verb "ing" +... + ?
- It is used to describe a past action, already started and continued up to another action or time in the past: "The boys had been playing soccer for about an hour when it started to rain."
- To express the duration before something in the past: "Richard needed a holiday because he had been working hard for six months."
- To describe the cause of something in the past: "He was tired because he had been jogging.".
Here is a video with additional and important information, I recommend you to watch it:
