English Language Learners Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for speakers of other languages learning English. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
This is a sentence from a book (I changed it a little) :
Had I invested in preserving and maintaining my laptop,I would still be enjoying it.
But I expected to see this sentence:( using would have ...)
Had I invested in preserving and maintaining my laptop, I would have still been enjoying it.
So what is the difference between these two sentences?
Your two sentences refer to different timeframes in the main clause.
Had I invested in preserving and maintaining my laptop,I would still be enjoying it.
Use this when you are speaking about the present and describing your present situation—you would still have use of the laptop today if you had maintained it in the past.
Had I invested in preserving and maintaining my laptop,I would still have been enjoying it.
Use this when you are speaking about a past occasion and describing your past situation—you would have still had use of the laptop at the time you are speaking about if you had maintained it before that past time.
