<p>Halloween rituals lost their serious aspect and ________ instead performed for amusement</p>
<p>I keep getting confused btwn when to use were and had been!</p>
<p>were - only once
had been - occuring ever since </p>
<p>Am I going in the rit direction?</p>
<p>Any explanation?</p>
<p>i usually use context clues. i dont know if that actually works but it usually gives me a better advantage when i go with a gut feeling. is this on a practice test with the portion you posted inside a paragraph? </p>
<p>for some reason my gut tells me "were" but its again just a feeling. Whats the answer? and i would like to hear an explanation from someone else as well to differentiate the 2 choices. good question, srry i couldnt answer it.</p>
<p>it is "were" :)</p>
<p>halloween is singular?</p>
<p>^^.....umm I don't quite understand wat u mean. The subject of the sentence is rituals.</p>
<p>Halloween is an adjective to rituals....which is the subject.</p>
<p>Also, I think you can analyze the verbs, and keep them in the same tense... so the first verb in the sentence is "lost" which is in the tense called "past simple," and so your other choice should also be in the "past simple" tense (in this case, "were"). </p>
<p>The choice "had been" reflects the "past perfect" tense, which would have been a good choice if the first verb was in that tense, namely "had lost." At least that is my thinking on it!</p>
<p>^^ I can see where ur going w/ that and thats actually a pretty nice idea. didn't think of it that way. BUT when do u use "had been"?</p>
<p>I think you use "had been" when it is something in the past that is a done deal. Past Perfect. Completed and finished in a more finalized way than the past simple, which doesn't tell you too much about when an past action took place.</p>
<p>You have four main choices in the past tense:</p>
<ol>
<li> Past simple, such as "I walked."</li>
<li> Past progressive, "I was walking to the store." Indicates an ongoing action in the past, usually with some other action about to happen.</li>
<li>Past perfect, "I had been walking four miles to lose weight." Indicates an action in the past that no longer happens.</li>
<li>Past perfect progressive, "I have been walking to lose weight." Here it is ongoing, in the past, but not necessarily completed.</li>
</ol>
<p>Here is a nice free grammar review, look unter the writing books, Grammar Essentials, p.122.</p>
<p>Search</a> Home</p>
<p>And of course, this kind of thinking can be applied to verbs in present tense, and verbs in future tense too.</p>
<p>"Indicates an action in the past that no longer happens" - Ah, so thats wat I've been confusing about!
TY for the help M8! :)</p>
<p>lol Halloween is not an adjective "Halloween rituals" is the subject. How do you describe something as "Halloween"</p>
<p>I think it's were because of the above definition of "had been"</p>
<p>^^ Halloween is an adj b/c it is describing rituals. It is being more specific. kinda like:
Buddhist rituals
Mayan Rituals
Ancient Rituals
All of the preceding words describe the word --> rituals.</p>
<p>Actually, Halloween is a modifying noun, though it doesn't change the sentence.</p>
<p>You have to use "were" because to use "had been" would be a tense shift, which is always a nono. To use had been, there must be a changing in grammatical tense, which isn't occurring here. "lost" and "were" are happening simultaneously, thus, you must keep them both in the simple past tense.</p>
<p>You can read more about Nouns</a> that Modify - Wordsmiths here, though the material is a bit thick.</p>
<p>English is somewhat unique in having nouns that modify; Romance languages lack them. However, German can create long strings of nouns, as in Rinderkennzeichnungs-</a> und Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia . Similar words occur in English, though more limitedly, as in those compound words everyone has learned since kindergarten (<-- compound! kinder+garten), like cupcake, airplane, and tabletop. </p>
<p>Buddhist, Mayan, and Ancient are not nouns; they're adjectives. Halloween is a noun.</p>