Past Perfect Continuous

Past Perfect Continuous (Past Perfect Progressive) – past perfect continuous tense in English. It is usually used to describe a continuous action that started and happened in the past before another action that is described in the past indefinite tense. The Present Perfect Continuous is formed with the help of the auxiliary verb had been and a verb ending in -ing.

Past Perfect Continuous

Signal words

Use

Form

before

for a day (week, month)

since 1995

all day (week)

till or until

how long something had been happening before something else happened

Something that started in the past and continued up to another action or time in the past

Something that finished just before another event in the past

had + been + infinitive + ing

The general scheme of using the Past Perfect Continuous on the example of the verb – to work

Positive	Negative	Question
I/You/We/They/He/She/It had been working	I/You/We/They/He/She/It hadn’t been working	Had I/You/We/They/He/She/It been working?

For convenience, you can use the abbreviated form:

had not been – hadn’t been

Examples:

Yesterday we had been playing for two hours when Dan arrived
The children had been playing and so the room was a mess
I had been translating for 3 hours when he arrived