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Past Perfect Continuous

The Past Perfect Continuous Tense

The past perfect continuous tense is used to talk about longer situations that continued up to the moment in the past we are talking about.

How do we make the Past Perfect Continuous Tense?

The structure of the past perfect continuous tense is:

subject	+	auxiliary verb HAVE	+	auxiliary verb BE	+	main verb
		conjugated in simple past tense		past participle		present participle
		had		been		base + ing

For negative sentences in the past perfect continuous tense, we insert not after the first auxiliary verb. For question sentences, we exchange the subject and first auxiliary verb. Look at these example sentences with the past perfect continuous tense:

	subject	auxiliary verb		auxiliary verb	main verb
+	I	had		been	working.
+	You	had		been	playing	tennis.
-	It	had	not	been	working	well.
-	We	had	not	been	expecting	her.
?	Had	you		been	drinking?
?	Had	they		been	waiting	long?

When speaking with the past perfect continuous tense, we often contract the subject and first auxiliary verb:

I had been	I'd been
you had been	you'd been
he had she had been it had been	he'd been she'd been it'd been
we had been	we'd been
they had been	they'd been

Past Perfect Continuous Timeline

For example:

"By the time I left England we had been living in Bristol for five years."

"His back was sore because he had been sitting at the computer all day."

It is also used to say how long something went on for up to a past time.

For example:-

We apologised because we had kept them waiting for 3 hours.

We apologised because we had kept them waiting since lunchtime.

!Note It is always for a length of time and since a point in time.