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 with before
We can also use the past perfect followed by before 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 Viktoriano96,
Perfect forms are very much context dependent and it's not possible to say why the past perfect is used here without knowing the broader context in which the sentence appears. In the sentence as written, the past simple is also possible. I would imagine that there is another past time reference somewhere in the text which provided a point from which the speaker/writer is looking back, but this is not clear from the sentence alone.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi Shanth,
It's a bit difficult to say which tense to use if we only look at a single sentence. That's because the choice of tense also depends on information in other sentences before or after this one.
But, if we just take this sentence alone, it's not correct to use past perfect because there's only one action in the sentence (conveyed our approval). The past perfect is used when there are two past actions, and we want to show clearly which one happened first (see above for more explanation). So, past simple is the right tense for this sentence.
Best wishes,
Jonathan
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Fahima mahjabin,
In this sentence, the words 'first' and 'then' show a sequence of actions, and we use the past simple after such adverbs. It would be a little unusual to use a past perfect here, but it is possible -- you could say, for example: 'I had made the salad when I toasted the bread.'
Hope this helps.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello kyawkyawsoezhu,
Yes, you could say that, though most of the time we'd say 'I toasted', since 'before' makes the sequence clear. If you were my student, I would recommend 'I toasted' there.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi Moses Jena,
Yes, the past perfect event must refer to another event or time in the past. If we say Had he closed the shop?, it must refer to another past event (e.g. Had he closed the shop before X happened?). That's the meaning of the structure, and the reason why it can't show a single event.
But, the other past event may or may not be in the same sentence. It could be, for example, in a previous sentence in the conversation.
In this example, the last sentence only shows one action, in the past perfect. But it's clearly referring to closing the shop before the robbery, and readers or listeners would understand it as referring to that rather than being a single, isolated action.
If there's no reference to another past event, one of these options should be used.
Best wishes,
Jonathan
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello kingson,
In time clauses that refer to the future, we typically use present tense forms (usually the present simple, but also the present perfect) to refer to the future action -- see the first paragraph of the Talking about the future section on this page.
In this case, the present perfect puts a little more emphasis on the action being finished (in the future), but otherwise there is no difference in meaning.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello kingson,
Good, I'm glad. The grammar in this sentence is the same as the other one you asked about earlier. There is a very slight emphasis on 'you' finishing the work, but basically 'when you have finished the work' is another way of saying 'when the work is finished' (or 'has been finished').
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Shreya,
The sentence does not look fully grammatical to me. In particular, I can't see what it refers to in the middle of the sentence.
Perfect forms are highly dependent on context and it's hard to comment on the use of the past perfect without knowing how the events in a particular sentence fit into the broader context of other past events as described in the rest of the text. It could be that had seen is used here because it is part of a reported speech construction, with the direct speech being 'limiting visitor numbers saw...,' but I can't be sure from just the decontextualised sentence.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi kingson,
Re: question 2, the first sentence is correct, and the second one is not. Religious or metaphorical rebirths aside, we are born only once, and it's always in a past time. I can't think of any situation where the present perfect would be used with 'to be born'.
As for your other questions, please remember that while we try to be as helpful as we can with your questions about sentences you have written or found, we just can't explain everything. It just takes too much of the limited time we have for responding to comments. But I will give you very brief answers. For the first situation, you should say 'had taken' or 'took' and not 'has taken', and 'when he left home'. The past perfect isn't correct in the general context you describe in your third question.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Karan Narang,
When we are describing a completed action in the past we generally use the past simple.
The past perfect is only used when there are two past time references and we want to show that one preceded the other and in some way influenced it. The past perfect can be thought of as expressing something in the past before another action in the past.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello kingson
The form 'had been learning' is a past perfect continuous. There are different possible meanings, but in general it describes actions or events which started before a reference point in the past and which were still happening up to that time. In theory, all of the possible uses on the Continuous aspect page also apply here.
Imagine that our friend Nancy took a Spanish language exam last week and got a high mark. If we didn't know she was a student of Spanish, we might say something like that sentence: 'I don't know how long she had been learning Spanish'.
Does that make sense?
All the best
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello kingson,
The past perfect requires a second past time reference, but in your sentence you have only a present time reference (I do not know). Therefore, the past perfect is not possible here. You could use a present perfect or a past simple form:
The first sentence (has lost) tells us that the business still exists and is still losing money.
The second sentence (lost) tells us that you are talking only about a past event, so the business either no longer exists, or is no longer losing money, or else you simply have no information about more recent results.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello kingson,
The past perfect needs to reference a second action in the past as it shows an action before another action in the past. It's not enough to simply have a past time reference; you need a second action (state/situation etc).
The past continuous needs to be placed in the past by a past time reference (a time reference, for example). This may be explicitly stated or implicit in the context.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello again kingson,
My apologies. I must have misread your question as I thought you were asking about the past continuous, not the past perfect continuous.
Perfect forms always refer backwards. They are retrospective in that sense. Thus, the present perfect looks back from the present, the future perfect looks back from a point in the future and the past perfect looks back from a point in the past towards some time or event further in the past.
This means that there must be a second past time reference when using the past perfect. This could be an action or a state, or simply a past time such as a date. It could be explicitly stated or implicit in the context, but it must be understood.
All of this is true of both the simple and continuous forms of the past perfect. Both require a second past time reference point.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello kingson
I don't see any past time reference in that sentence. Presumably, this would have been stated in the context, e.g. it might have been mentioned in the previous sentence or two.
All the best
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
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
Hello Henok17
That sentence can be correct in certain situations. I'd recommend you ask your teacher about it; I expect they can help you understand how that sentence can be correct.
All the best
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Raj,
Yes, the sentence is perfectly grammatical.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team