In my recent weekly topic columns, I have used past perfect and past perfect continuous verbs several times, so for anyone studying English, here is some advice on using these tenses to sequence past actions!

Note: “Continuous” tenses and “progressive” tenses are the same, so ”past perfect continuous” and “past perfect progressive” are the same tense. Different textbooks and teachers use different words.

First, let’s see a few examples from my recent columns:

• I had gone through most of the movies on Netflix already and wanted to check out what Disney had to offer. (past perfect)
• Just one week after I had gone back to work, Toronto suddenly went into lockdown and my school closed. (past perfect)
• I’d been living in the city for almost 20 years, so it was nice to be working with my hands and smelling the fresh air again. (past perfect continuous)

Notice that all of the example sentences also contain past simple verbs. This is very common because past perfect and past perfect continuous are usually used with past simple to show the sequence of two (or more) past actions (or times).

The past perfect or past perfect continuous action happened first (earlier in time) and the past simple action happened second (later in time). Consider the following example:

• By the time I arrived at the store, it had closed.

The verb tenses tell us that first the store closed and second I arrived. The order of the verbs in the sentence doesn’t matter, so we could also say:

• The store had closed by the time I arrived.

Past perfect continuous allows us to give a duration of time, explain the cause of something, or show that an action was interrupted in the past. For example…

• I had been studying for 6 years by the time I finally graduated. (duration)
• Her eyes were red because she had been crying. (cause of something)
• We had only been sleeping for a few minutes when the fire alarm suddenly went off. (interrupted action)

Remember: If there is no connection to another past action or past time, don’t use past perfect or past perfect continuous. 

Note: Past perfect and past perfect continuous are not common tenses! Native speakers often find ways to avoid using them. For example, instead of saying “By the time I arrived, the store had closed,” we might say “By the time I arrived, the store was closed.” 

I hope this will help you to sequence past actions in English!

Zach