You have no "standing" with me and will not have until you define and illustrate the past perfect in this forum. I will not respond to the substance of anything you write on the subject of the past perfect until you demonstrate precisely your understanding of it.

If you can do it, do it.

This is the end of Day One of your holdout.

.brad.09apr09.

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Brad,

While I should let the writer of that sentence speak for himself, what you're objecting to is the point on which we, many of us on this list, disagree with you. No one would argue that was/were is not the past tense of "be." But in this sentence past perfect is clearly called for. The marking down clearly is prior to the instructor having the student in his/her office. There is no other syntactic marking of this, and so the past perfect helps to order events as the writer intends. I don't understand why you would call this use of the past perfect wrong. It's what we agree the past perfect is about.

Herb

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From: Brad Johnston [[log in to unmask]" ymailto="mailto:[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]]
Sent: April 9, 2009
To: [log in to unmask]" ymailto="mailto:[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Any member can give their opinion

A couple of days ago, I had a student in my office asking about exactly the same issue. His paper for another class (had been) was marked down about a letter grade for "person" --> "they" shifts, and as he had a different class in which it wouldn't have been an issue ...

The past tense of the verb "to be" is was (singular) and were (plural), not "had been".