The Past perfect Continuous or past perfect progressive tense is used for continuous event that happened in the past, and also got completed in the past.
The sentence structure formula for Past Perfect Progressive Sentences is (Subject + had + been + ‘ing’ form of the verb + object)
Let us understand this formula with the help of an example “I had been cooking”. Here ‘I’ is the subject, ‘had been’ is used to represent a completed action of the past, ‘cook’ + ‘ing’ to form ‘cooking’ to show a continuous action.
Examples of Past Perfect Progressive Sentences
- I had been writing
- We had been writing
- You had been writing
- He had been writing
- It had been writing
- They had been writing
- They had not been paying the rent since 2015
- Sharma had not been eating since he left his dog at the clinic.
- I had been trying to learn the guitar.
- Had Jessica been using the same camera?
- He had been playing the game for 5 hours
- Had they been eating the same food since 2013?
Notice how we are using ‘had been’ to show that we are talking about the completed action of past and ‘ing’ form of verb to represent a continuous action.
Now, let’s see how past perfect continuous tense works with ACTIVE and PASSIVE voices.
Active Voice Form of Past Perfect Progressive Sentences
The Sentence Structure formula for active voice form of past perfect continuous or progressive sentences is (Subject + had been + ‘ing’ form of the verb + object)
let us see how the above formula work
- I had been writing the novel.
Passive Voice Form of Past Perfect Continuous Sentences
The past perfect progressive sentences are already passive in nature by default therefore we don’t need to change their voice to passive.
(Note: A sentence in Past Perfect Continuous Tense can’t be converted from ACTIVE voice to passive voice)
You can use this article as an extensive guide to past perfect progressive tenses which will help you in building a sentence perfectly. In this website, there’s an individual section for every type of tense exclusively. So go through each of it to have a wider picture.
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