Past Future Perfect Continuous Tense

The Past Future Perfect Continuous Tense may sound rather complicated for its very long name; but this tense is actually almost similar to the Future Perfect Continuous Tense. The difference appears on their time dimension. As the additional information, the Past Future Perfect Continuous Tense emphasizes on the course and the duration of the action. Then to make it easy you’d better study the Future Perfect Continuous Tense first then change the form into past.

The Patterns

Affirmative

Subject + would + have + been + verb-ing—->> I would have been doing ….

Negative

Subject + would + not + have + been + verb-ing—>> I would not have been doing ….

Interrogative (Yes/No Question)

Would + subject + have + been + verb-ing?—>> Would you have been doing …?

Time Signals

Since the Past Future Perfect Continuous Tense emphasizes on the duration of the action, so we use for …..(for an hour, for three weeks, for two months, for ten years, etc.) to express the time signals.

The Uses

The Past Future Perfect Continuous Tense is used to tell an action which would have been happening until a certain time (period) in the past.

Examples:

  • I would have been waiting for him for two hours when he finally appeared with his innocent face yesterday.
  • She would have been arranging the documents for three hours when suddenly her boss asked her to type a business letter.
  • At this time yesterday, they would have been doing the test for more than one hour.
  • The family would have been living in that house for three years in August 2009.
  • He would have been working for the company for 30 years when he retired last year.