Past Perfect Continuous

• Use the past perfect continuous to talk about an ongoing action that started in the past and continued up to another point in the past. It focuses on the duration of the action before something else happened.
• Pronoun / Subject
• Auxiliary Verb
• Verb + -ing
• Time Expression
• I / You / We / They
• had been
• working
• for three hours
• He / She / It
• had been
• investigating
• all morning
• Remember
• Form the past perfect continuous with 'had been' plus the main verb ending in '-ing'.
• Use 'for' with a period of time and 'since' with a starting point.
• Do not use state verbs like 'know' or 'seem' in continuous tenses.
• Examples
• Mark had been working in the Chicago office for five years before he moved to Boston.
• The auditors had been checking the financial ledgers all week when they found the discrepancy.
• Common mistakes
• She was working at the bank for two hours before the manager arrived.
• She had been working at the bank for two hours before the manager arrived.

Complete the sentences

• The team in New York (audit) ____ the accounts for weeks before they found the issue.
• David (reconcile) ____ the petty cash records when the power went out.
• Why (overcharge) ____ our clients for months?
• Melissa (investigate) ____ the missing figures since Monday morning.
• The finance department (process) ____ duplicate payments all day.
• We (look) ____ at the ledger entries for hours before Robert arrived.

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