By Simple past, Past tenses

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...

Hey!Am I right in using "went" instead of "gone"?"I've been very good and even went to bed early last night."Thanks!

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...

Hi,1. Yesterday Mary cooked dinner. This is just a simple statement about a past event. That's why it uses Simple Past tense.2. Yesterday Mary had cooked dinner. In basic terms, this tells me about a past event that happened before some other past event.eg Tom came home from work. Mary cooked...

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...

It's because 'sat' is the simple past tense- an action that takes place once i.e. I sat down. I was sitting, I had been sitting etc is the past continuous tense as it is an action that continues for some time when something else happens. Hope that explains it!

 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...

thank you. I make errors everytime I post. sorry. "My question was: 'before' can be used with any simple past?.. And now I know that 'before' can't be used with a single simple past tense, ...

GG, Maybe it’s a misperception on my part. I agreed your example is prefectly legal (w/ a minor addition). Please correct me if I am wrong. Most people will likely treat recent events with a simple past tense, won’t they; especially when the event happened recently? A-Where did you go? Your...