By Past tenses, Past perfect

My two cents: If you ask me, the term optional may be confusing you. To me, the past perfect tense is not used as frequently as the simple past tense and if you just mean to eat, you use it. It is you who should decide whether the context of your text should give importance to difference...

Hi,Please take a look at this and tell me if the past perfect tenses can be past tenses, eventhough the past perfect tenses would make sequences more clear. I am confused as to under what circumstances we don't absolutely/necessarily have to use a past perfect. When is leaving it for readers...

Hello, everyone. One of my grammar books says both past perfect and simple past tense mean the same thing in the following example: When the teacher had arrived, they stopped talking.=When the teacher arrived, they stopped talking. But my another book says they don't mean the same thing. It...

Can someone explain these to me these please.Can you tell me how this works?1)It was hard. It was during a tough time I was dropped (dropped -- better?) out of college due to the pressure. I may have been too young. 1) We had moved our house. It was difficult. 2) I had married by then, and I was...

In Hillary's speech she said, "Well, this isn't the party I had expected"I was asked if this is correct because normally with this form we would use the past tense (i.e. This wasn't the party I had expected)Any ideas?

We use past perfect to place event B further back in time than event A:I found : past tense. Obviously, Joe must have written the assignment before that. I found that ( when you actually wrote this assignment, further back in time) you had made some mistakes.'gathered' is not appropriate...

1. Well, "had" is the past tense of the verb "have", but I think you're asking specifically about its use as an auxiliary to form the past perfect tense of other verbs: I played -- simple past tense I have played -- present perfect tense I had played -- past perfect (or...

 Here is  the 'blog' referred to:StartFragment>"The High Court had on July 1, 2003, found theboy, then aged 12, guilty of murdering the 11-year-old girl at her house inSentul, Kuala Lumpur, by stabbing her 20 times with a sharp object on May 30,2002" in the news proper on...

Thank you Grammar Geek. The past perfect is not to be used for a definite point of time in the past (like yesterday). Like it or not, I am afraid this is the rule. I have come across a blog post titled Simple Past Tense against Past Perfect which hopefully can do the necessary...

1. Yes, but then you should probably change so to very because so ... sets up reader expectation for another clause beginning with that ...She had been very happy that Dahu chose her.She had been so happy that Dahu chose her ------ that she jumped up and kissed him. (Ignore the first that. ...