<p>I get confused when to use "had" . There are question where it is usually wrong in identifying sentence error. So can anyone explain when to use had and give examples?</p>
<p>“Had” can be used as a regular old past tense of “have” (she had cereal for breakfast),
but the more confusing use is when it is used to describe something that was in the process of happening when something else happened. I’m sure there’s a name for the tense, but every tense name I ever learned I learned in Spanish class, and I’m not recalling this one. You don’t need to know the name of the tense to use it correctly, it turns out. :)</p>
<p>“I had been driving for days when I came across the abandoned house.”
“The zombies had been wandering around aimlessly until they saw me coming.”
“I had been excited to find shelter until I realized that it, like every other place I had found, was full of zombies.”
“I had hoped against hope that the whole zombie situation would have been sorted out by Christmas, but that was looking less and less likely.”</p>
<p>The name of the tense is “pluperfect,” or “past perfect,” if it helps to search for more information on usage.</p>
<p>Actually, in the first three sentences the past perfect progressive is used.
past perfect:</p>
<p>had + past participle</p>
<p>past perfect progressive:</p>
<p>had + been + past participle</p>
<p>And in these examples past perfect progressive is used to describe an ongoing action which is interrupted at a certain point.</p>