From Ridley Pearson's "Cut and Run", c.2005.
   
  "His arm steady, he fired again, but the man was turned, his profile reduced. The porcelain figurine erupted off the table into a thousand floating shards."
   
  A dozen lines later, he writes:
   
  "Larson dropped him with a single round, a gut-shot that staggered him back and pushed him to sitting against the wall by the table where the figurine had been."
   
  The rule is: The past tense of "to be" is "was" (singular) or "were" (plural), not "had been".    
  But, ".. against the wall by the table where the figurine was", doesn't work because the figurine had already erupted into a thousand floating shards. It wasn't there anymore.
   
  The verb form, "had been", is compelled by context.
   
  .brad.24apr08. 


       
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