Grammar Spod: Past Perfect

Dear friends of English grammar,

I am delighted to share with you the undeniable secrets of the lovely English language once again this month.

Having had a closer look at the Present Perfect tense in last month’s StopPress, this time we will look at the Past Perfect tense.

The Past Perfect

Let’s turn to the ever so useful Cambridge Advanced Learners’ Dictionary for the definition of the Past Perfect tense:

‘The grammatical tense used to describe an action that had already finished when another action happened. It is made with had and a past participle.’

We use the Past Perfect simple tense for the following:

We use the Past Perfect simple tense for the ‘earlier past’ or the ‘completed past’. A common use is to ‘go back’ when we are already talking about the past, so as to make it clear that something has already happened at the time we are talking about:

• I realised we had met before.
• NOT: I realised we met before.
• When I arrived at the party the teachers had already gone home.

The Past Perfect is common after verbs of saying and thinking, to talk about things that had happened before the saying or thinking took place:

• I told her that I had finished my lesson plan.    

We use the Past Perfect continuous tense to talk about longer actions or situations which had continued up to the past moment that we are thinking about , or shortly before:

• When I found my friend, I could see she had been crying.

I hope you enjoyed this introduction to the use of the Past Perfect tense. Please let me know if there is a tense or a grammatical concept you would like to read about in particular in one of the following editions of StopPress. I would be delighted to hear from you at stoppress@laltorbay.co.uk.
Until next month – yours sincerely,
Countess Grammar.  AM