Look at these examples to see how the past perfect is used.
He couldn't make a sandwich because he'd forgotten to buy bread.
The hotel was full, so I was glad that we'd booked in advance.
My new job wasn't exactly what I’d expected.
Try this exercise to test your grammar.
- Grammar test 1
Read the explanation to learn more.
Grammar explanation
Time up to a point in the past
We use the past perfect simple (had + past participle) to talk about time up to a certain point in the past.
She'd published her first poem by the time she was eight.
We'd finished all the water before we were halfway up the mountain.
Had the parcel arrived when you called yesterday?
Past perfect for the earlier of two past actions
We can use the past perfect to show the order of two past events. The past perfect shows the earlier action and the past simple shows the later action.
When the police arrived, the thief had escaped.
It doesn't matter in which order we say the two events. The following sentence has the same meaning.
The thief had escaped when the police arrived.
Note that if there's only a single event, we don't use the past perfect, even if it happened a long time ago.
The Romans spoke Latin. (NOT
The Romans had spoken Latin.)
Past perfect after before
We can also use before + past perfect to show that an action was not done or was incomplete when the past simple action happened.
They left before I'd spoken to them.
Sadly, the author died before he'd finished the series.
Adverbs
We often use the adverbs already (= 'before the specified time'), still (= as previously), just (= 'a very short time before the specified time'), ever (= 'at any time before the specified time') or never (= 'at no time before the specified time') with the past perfect.
I called his office but he'd already left.
It still hadn't rained at the beginning of May.
I went to visit her when she'd just moved to Berlin.
It was the most beautiful photo I'd ever seen.
Had you ever visited London when you moved there?
I'd never met anyone from California before I met Jim.
Do this exercise to test your grammar again.
- Grammar test 2
Hello kingson,
The past perfect describes an action in the past in relation to another action later in the past. Thus any past perfect form requires a second past time reference point. That could be in the same sentence or it could be in another sentence, or it could be simply understood from the broader context. There is no rule that a past perfect cannot be used with a present verb form. It depends on the context and whether or not there is a second past time reference.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello kingson
The second one is correct if you use 'since'.
All the best
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello kingson
It's true that a continuous verb form can be used to show that an action is temporary, but it's not true that all continuous verb forms mean this. In other words, in the appropriate context, your sentence could be talking about a temporary condition, but in other contexts it could have another one of the meanings on the page I linked to earlier.
I'm afraid that the first sentence in your first comment is not correct. In many languages (such as Spanish), it's correct to use a present continuous verb form to refer to an action that began in the past, but in English, the correct form for this kind of situation is the present perfect continuous.
All the best
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Swati,
I'm afraid we don't provide a correction service on LearnEnglish. We're a small team here and we have thousands of users on the site. We're happy to provide explanations of particular language points but it's just not possible for us to correct texts like this.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team