Past Perfect
A few days ago, I was invited to my friend’s birthday party. He told me that the party would start at 8. However, I arrived there at 10! Unfortunately, some of the guests had left already. So, I couldn’t see some of the friends that I hadn’t seen for a long time.
As we can see, when Ryan arrived, his friends had left the party. This means that first his friends left the party, and then Ryan arrived. In the example above, arrived is past simple and had left is past perfect.
Forming Past Perfect Questions
Past perfect form of a verb is made in the following ways:
Positive form: had + past participle (P.P)
Negative Form: had not + past participle (P.P) OR hadn’t + past participle (P.P)
Question Form: (wh.-word) + had + subject + past participle (P.P)
I had called John before I left the office.
When I finished college, I hadn’t started my job yet.
Had you heard about her divorce from Jimmy?
Where had you been before moving to Tokyo?
When to Use Past Perfect
I. When we are talking about a past action or situation, to mention something that happened even earlier than that, we use past perfect. In other words, when talking about two actions in the past, the one that occurs first (is far from now) can appear in past perfect form. The second action (the one that happens later) is expressed in the past simple.
When we got to the cinema, the film had already started.
I had been awake for some time when the alarm rang.
II. To say how long an action or situation continued before a certain point in the past, we use past perfect.
Yesterday, I finally managed to make some time to visit some old friends I hadn’t seen for years.
They had worked together for 10 years when, last year, they started their own company.
III. We use past perfect to talk about things that we hoped or wanted to do, but we did not actually do.
She had hoped she would find a new flat in just a few weeks, but it took her over two months.
We had expected to receive a promotion after all that pressure, but the company hardly acknowledged it.
Adverbs with Past Perfect
Note that sometimes we use an adverb with a past perfect verb. We usually put the adverb between “had” and the “past participle”.
Billy came to tell me about the football match, but I had already heard about the result.
Last summer, I visited the Grand Canyon. I had never seen such a beautiful view before that.