Forming and Using the Past Perfect Tense

participle form that you have to learn. Here are the rules, using
the regular verb "arrive" and the irregular verb "eat":
Subject HAVE Past Participle Contraction

I had arrived.
eaten. I’d arrived.
I’d eaten.
You had arrived.
eaten. You’d arrived.
You’d eaten.
He had arrived.
eaten. He’d arrived.

He’d eaten.
She had arrived.
eaten. She’d arrived.
She’d eaten.
It had arrived.
eaten. It’d arrived.
It’d eaten.
We had arrived.
eaten. We’d arrived.
We’d eaten.
They had arrived.
eaten. They’d arrived.
They’d eaten.

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Using the Past Perfect

The past perfect is used to show you which of two events happened first. Imagine that two things happened in the past:

I went to see the movie.
We discussed the movie in class.

Here, we don’t know which order the events happened in. That may be important — perhaps I went to see the movie after the discussion, or maybe I saw the movie before the discussion. There are many ways to make this sequence clear, and the past perfect is one of them. This is how we do it:

I went to see the movie. We had discussed it in class.

Here, we KNOW that the discussion took place FIRST — even though the sentence describing it comes afterwards. We discussed the movie, and THEN I went to see it. This can be very useful when you are telling a story or relating a sequence of events. At any point in your story, you can jump BACK to a previous event, and your reader will not be confused, because the past perfect will make it clear that the event happened previously. Here is another example:

I wanted to live in a foreign country, so I applied for a job in Japan. Judy lived in Japan, so I called her to find out more about the culture and lifestyle there.
(
Judy was probably still living in Japan when I called her.)