Past Tenses
Finished actions, stories, and which of two past things happened first.
Every story you tell uses the simple past. The other three help you set the scene and put events in order.
- Simple past: I ate. Finished things at a finished time.
- Past continuous: I was eating. What was going on at a moment in the past.
- Past perfect: I'd eaten. The past before the past.
- Past perfect continuous: I'd been eating. How long, before something else happened.
See all twelve tenses side by side in Tenses.