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Are you saying that the past perfect is correct when used in this way: "By the time something happened, something else had already happened." Thanks, Martha.

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Martha,

The past perfect is correct ONLY when used in this way. There is no remote past in English; the past is past. The Battle of Hastings was a long time ago but it WAS fought in 1066. 'Had been' won't help the Anglo-Saxons a whit, even now.

And the past perfect is NOT used to show that one past event occurred before another. 'Yesterday, I went to the store and bought peaches', with nary a 'had' in sight.

In all cases, as can be clearly demonstrated, the past perfect is a specialized device that applies in very specific situations in which the timing, the sequence, is important. Once grasped, there is no question as to correctness or incorrectness, despite all the thousands of crazy sounds that come from peoples mouths and pens, among which are putting 'had' in front of past tense verbs and using 'had been' instead of 'was' and 'were', both of which errors are common.

The past perfect has not been taught for at least half a century but it should not die, indeed it cannot die, because it has a very specific meaning, a meaning which is there whether anyone sees it or not.

These sentences came in yesterday, off-list and from France, interestingly enough, in response to "Bloodmoney".

When Brad got up, his roommate had made coffee.
When Brad got up, his roommate made coffee.
Before Brad got up, his roommate made coffee.
Are these correct?

Indeed they are correct. In the first sentence, the coffee was made before, and in the second, after. By the time something happened, 'Brad got up', something else had already happened, 'his roommate had made coffee'.

Nice of you to stop by, Martha. I hope my reply is complete enough for the moment and gentle enough. There are thousands of English teachers in America, so there are lots of teachers who can learn to teach a useful device that is in our language, regardless of whether it's recognized. It's still right there where it's always been, waiting to lend a helping hand.

.brad.20june11.

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Brad

I am not sure I understand the following statement: One of my standard illustrations of the past perfect is your "By the time they reached Amman, the sun had set in the Western hills". (By the time something happened, something else had already happened.) I always give you and Body of Lies credit."

Are you saying that the past perfect is correct when used in this way: "By the time something happened, something else had already happened."

Thanks,

Martha

Bloodmoney, by David Ignatius, c.2011

"It was part of General Malik's aura among his colleagues at General Headquarters in Rawalpindi that he knew how to handle the Americans. This was based partly on the fact that he <had> spent a year at the Army War College in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. And if you knew Kansas, people said, well, then you knew the real America. Malik <had> actually disliked Kansas, and the only part of America that he <had> truly loved was the Rockies, where the thin air and the steep peaks reminded him of his ancestral home in the mountains of Kashmir. But he knew how to sham, in a way that is an art form for the people of South Asia, and so he <had> pretended for years to have a special fondness for the Americans from the heartland." (page 6)

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David,

One way to beat it .. I assume you write on a computer .. is to hit Control-F for 'find', insert 'had' in the box, and then look at all the words after the 'had's and decide if they are past tense verbs. If they are -- as are the four in the quote above (spent, disliked, loved, and pretended) -- delete the 'had's. Past tense verbs should not have the word 'had' in front of them. There is nothing the word 'had' can do for a past tense verb that the verb cannot do for itself.

When you come upon something like this quote from page 11, you will have a different problem.

"She was still in her thirties, still in middle school in the secret world, but one of her discoveries as she had grown older .. oops, clang. What's this? This is a disguised past-tense verb 'grew', which you tried to put 'had' in front of. But being an irregular past tense verb, it balked, and made you force the irregular past participle, giving you 'had grown' instead of 'grew'. It should read, "one of her discoveries as she grew older was that most things in life didn't [should read, don't] measure up to their promise."

When I come to a legitimate past perfect, I'll be back in touch. I hope Bloodmoney is as good as Body of Lies.

One of my standard illustrations of the past perfect is your "By the time they reached Amman, the sun had set in the Western hills". (By the time something happened, something else had already happened.) I always give you and Body of Lies credit.

.brad.18june11.