Past Perfect and Past Perfect Progressive

The past perfect is formed using had + past participle. Questions are indicated by inverting the subject and had. Negatives are made with not:

Affirmative: You had studied English before you moved to New York.

Question: Had you studied English before you moved to New York?

Negative: You had not studied English before you moved to New York.

The past perfect expresses the idea that something occurred before another action in the past. It can also show that something happened before a specific time in the past:

I had never seen such a beautiful beach before I went to Kauai.

I did not have any money because I had lost my wallet.

Tony knew Istanbul so well because he had visited the city several times.

With non-continuous verbs and some non-continuous uses of mixed verbs, we use the past perfect to show that something started in the past and continued up until another action in the past:

We had had that car for ten years before it broke down.

By the time Alex finished his studies, he had been in London for over eight years.

They felt bad about selling the house because they had owned it for more than forty years.

He had been drinking milk out the carton when Mom walked into the kitchen.

I had been working at the company for five years when I got the promotion.

Martha had been walking three miles a day before she broke her leg.

The program that was terminated had been working well since 1945.

Cathy had been playing the piano for 35 years when she was finally asked to do a solo with the local orchestra.

He had not been talking.

She had not been crying.

They had not been running.

They hadn't been running.

Had the pilot been drinking before the crash?

Had he been talking?

Had they been eating?