English Grammar Rules & Mistakes: Learn All of the Essentials: Writing, Speaking, Literature and Punctuation Rules Complete with 10 Key Skills and Over 200 Common Error Examples

eaten the entire birthday cake. The had eaten is written in past perfect tense
and is part of a sequence of events. First the person expressed they were
shocked and then they said why.
Luckily, the past perfect tense is simpler to conjugate than to understand. To
conjugate it you only have to add had before a past participle.
First-person singular
I had eaten
Second-person singular
You had eaten
Third-person singular
He/She/It had eaten

---

First-person plural
We had eaten
Second-person plural
You had eaten
Third-person plural
They had eaten
To make a past perfect tense verb negative, you add the words not after the
word had.
They demanded I leave the restaurant even though I had not eaten
yet.
Past continuous
The past continuous tense is the final version of the past tense which I will
mention. It is used to describe a situation that happened in the past over a
period of time.
Even though the sun was shining all summer, I could not find
happiness in it.
In this example, you can see that the action of the sun shining happened in
the past over a period of time which is defined as the summer. As I have
mentioned before, this is one tense that people mix with the present tense
when writing, so keep in mind the purpose of it.
The past continuous tense is conjugated by adding was or were to the present
participle (meaning it has ing at the end of the verb).
First-person singular
I was waiting
Second-person singular You were waiting
Third-person singular
He/She/It was waiting
First-person plural
We were waiting
Second-person plural
You were waiting

---

Third-person plural
They were waiting
To make a past continuous tense verb negative, you can add the words not
after the verb to be.
Don’t worry, I was not waiting for too long.