English Past Perfect Continuous

The past perfect continuous tense, also known as the past perfect progressive, is used to describe an action that started in the past, continued for a certain duration and was still ongoing or had just finished before another action or point in the past.

It is often used to highlight the duration of an activity, explain cause or set the scene in narratives.

How to Form the Past Perfect Continuous

The past perfect continuous tense is formed using the following structure:

[Subject] + had been + [present participle] 

The present participle is the “-ing” form of the verb. Here are some examples:

I had been studying for three hours when she arrived.

They had been working on the project before the deadline was extended.

She had been living in New York for five years before she moved to London.

In speech and casual writing, the subject pronoun (I, you, we, etc.) and the word “had” are often contracted. Here is how this looks:

I’d been studying for three hours when she arrived.

They’d been working on the project before the deadline was extended.

She’d been living in New York for five years before she moved to London.

Negatives in the past perfect continuous

To form a negative sentence in the past perfect continuous tense, just add “not” between “had” and “been”:

[Subject] + had not been + [present participle] 

“Had not” is often contracted to “hadn’t.” Here are a couple of examples:

She hadn’t been working here long before she got promoted.

They hadn’t even been living in the city for a year when they decided to move.

Questions in the past perfect continuous

To form a question in the past perfect continuous tense, invert “had” and the subject:

Had + [subject] + been + [present participle] …?

Here are some examples:

Had they been waiting long when the bus finally arrived?

Had she been practicing the piano every day before her performance?

How to Use the Past Perfect Continuous

To show duration before another action

The past perfect continuous is often used to emphasize the duration of an action that was happening before another action in the past. This is common when the length of time is mentioned. For example:

He’d been waiting for over an hour before the bus finally arrived.

We’d been walking for miles before we found a place to rest.

To indicate cause and effect

The past perfect continuous can be used to show that an action in the past was the cause of a later event. It helps explain why something happened in the past. For example:

She was tired because she’d been running all morning.

They were upset because they’d been arguing for hours.

In narratives

This tense is also used in storytelling or narratives to provide background information or describe situations that were ongoing before the main events of the story. For example:

The company had been struggling financially before the new CEO took over.

My dad had been teaching at the university for 20 years before he retired.