4

Yesterday I called my doctor but could not get his appointment. Hence Today I again tried for his appointment.
I started our conversation with receptionist as follows.

Yesterday, I had called for an appointment but could not get doctor’s appointment, can you book my appointment for Today at 7 pm."

Is my conversation is correct Or Should I simply use simple past tense as below?

Yesterday, I called for an appointment but could not get doctor’s appointment. Can you book my appointment for Today at 7 pm?

I know simple past is perfect here but can I use Past perfect tense to give emphasis on my first action i.e. called for an appointment.

I mean

Yesterday I called receptionist first. And after that I give up because receptionist refused my appointment after checking his appointment diary and then I choose to wait for tomorrow’s appointment.

1

4 Answers 4

1

Right, past perfect is what happens before an instance of past tense. But the emphasis of past perfect is to clarify the order of the events, not their importance. When the order is obvious, it sounds awkward to use it.

I drove to the store, but couldn't find what I wanted.

There is an order in this example, but it's obvious: first I wanted it, then I drove, and then I couldn't find it. It would be awkward to use any past perfect here. In fact, it might be more confusing because your listener would be left wondering why the order was so important.

The store didn't have what I wanted, and I had checked three other places already!

This time the emphasis helps to distinguish the order of events. The past perfect happened, then the past, and now we're talking about it. If you drop the "had," it isn't clear if the store came before or after the three other places. But still, it's clear that I had wanted the thing before I checked at any of the stores, so it sounds better to not specify that part of the order.

I had wanted ice cream, but they had freshly baked cookies.

Here, the wanting ended before the finding happened, so this was probably an upgrade! If I left out the "had," it's possible I still wanted ice cream when I settled for the cookies. Either way, I shouldn't get so grumpy about junk food.

0

Just a simple explanation:

When you use past perfect listners or readers expect more information is going to come.

If you wanna say what happened in the past use the simple past, but if you wanna say what happened or what was happening before another thing happened use past perfect.

In other word use past perfect when you want to say what had happened up to a point in the past (or before a certain time in the past).

-2

If there is two activities in The past past perfect is used for previous activity and past simple is used for second activity. I had learnet English later I went to England.

-4

I think we can use past perfect to give emphasis on the first action as you mentioned. While using 'past perfect' in a sentence, we normally use 'simple past' to refer to second action which happenes after the first action. But we normally use simple past with time words such as 'yesterday'. I would say both simple past and past perfect are grammatically correct to use in this kind of situation. But 'simple past' is more common and idiomatic.

The first version

Yesterday, I had called for an appointment but could not get doctor’s appointment, can you book my appointment for Today at 7 pm."

This sentence emphasizes on the first action i.e. I called for an appointment." But It doesn't mean that simple past doesn't emphasis to the first action.

The second version

Yesterday, I called for an appointment but could not get doctor’s appointment. Can you book my appointment for Today at 7 pm?

In this sentence,the word 'yesterday' clearly shows that both the actions' I called for an appointment' and 'couldn't get doctor's appointment' happened in past i.e. in yesterday. Both the actions happened in the past and It's self understood (Implied) that the first action is 'I called for an appointment.'

On the other hand, as @khan mentioned in his comment, both the action happened in sequence (one after another). So, we don't normally need to use 'past perfect' to give emphasis to the first action.

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .