The Past Perfect Continuous is used to talk about an ongoing action that was taking place until another specified moment in the past.
To make negative statements in the Past Perfect Continuous, we use:
had not (hadn’t) been + the “-ing” form of the verb
Singular | Plural |
I had not been (hadn’t been) sleeping You hadn’t been sleeping He/she/it hadn’t been sleeping | We hadn’t been sleeping You hadn’t been sleeping They hadn’t been sleeping |
We use Past Perfect Continuous to ask and answer questions about actions or events that started in the past and continued up to a certain time or another action in the past.
To make questions in the Past Perfect Continuous, we should use the following structure:
had + [subject] + been + -ing verb
To create a question that will be answered with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’, use ‘Had‘ (or ‘Hadn’t‘ for a negative question) + been + the ing (Present Participle) form of the verb.
Singular | Plural |
Had I been skating? Had you been skating? Had he/she/it been skating? | Had we been skating? Had you been skating? Had they been skating? |
Note: In short positive answers to the Past Perfect Continuous questions we use only full forms of ‘had’. In short negative answers we can also use short forms of ‘had’. |
Special questions (also known as wh-questions) are questions that require more information in their answers. They are made using wh- words such as what, where, when, why, which, who, how, how many, how much.
To make a special question, use the same word order as with yes-no questions but put a wh-word before the verb ‘had’. The structure is:
wh-word + had + [subject] + been + -ing verb
Note that state verbs cannot be used in any continuous tenses. Instead of using Past Perfect Continuous with these verbs, we should use Past Perfect. – – The car had belonged to Mike for years before Tina bought it. |
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