Hello! I'm Elizabeth O'Brien, and my goal is to get you jazzed about grammar. Learn more.

Past Perfect Tense

Hello! I'm Elizabeth O'Brien, and my goal is to get you jazzed about grammar.

Past Perfect Tense

Past perfect tense verbs are formed with the helping verb had and the verb's past participle.

They show an action that came before another action in the past.

The team had won before I arrived.

My sister had just left when we walked in the door.

Although this verb tense shows an action that came before another action in the past, that other action does not have to be stated in the sentence.

It can simply be implied.

For instance, these sentences are still made with the past perfect verb tense although the past action is not stated like it is in the sentences above.

The team had won.

My sister had just left.

What is a perfect tense?

Every verb has three perfect tenses.

The three perfect tenses are formed with the helping verbs have, has, had, will and shall and the past participle of the verb.

1. Present Perfect Verbs are formed with the helping verbs has and have.

2. Past Perfect Verbs are formed with the helping verb had.

3. Future Perfect Verbs are formed with the helping verbs will have and shall have.

Past Participles

You need to know what a past participle is because past perfect verbs are formed using a verb's past participle.

Are you ready to learn about past participles? Great!

Every verb has what are called four principal parts.

We can take any verb and break it into these parts. Past participles are simply one of those parts of a verb.

Here's a chart showing you some examples of verbs broken into their principal parts.

Present	Present Participle	Past	Past Participle
kick	(is) kicking	kicked	(have) kicked
win	(is) winning	won	(have) won
walk	(is) walking	walk	(have) walked

If you'd like to learn more about past participles, click here.

Forming the Past Perfect Tense

So, to form the past perfect verb tense, just slap a had in front of the past participle of the verb.

had	+ Past Participle	Past Perfect
had	+ learned	had learned
had	+ won	had won
had	+ graduated	had graduated

Elizabeth O'Brien from Grammar Revolution

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