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"I’d been driving home late that night."

What hides under "I'd"? If it is "I had", then it seems Past Perfect Continuous tense suits best here, but Past Perfect Continuous supposed to have two actions, isn't it? So, I'm confused, please help me with clarification

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  • It is "had". Sounds like there are more sentences to follow though.
    – Peter
    Commented Sep 2, 2020 at 12:43
  • @Peter So, one tense could cover two sentences? Commented Sep 2, 2020 at 13:45
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    When you say 'supposed to have two actions', do you mean something like I'd been driving home late when I'd heard the news on the car radio? Commented Sep 2, 2020 at 14:08
  • @KateBunting Yes, I mean these kind of actions. In my case it says: "I’d been driving home late that night. As I came up to my house, my headlights landed on the biggest deer I had ever seen, right in the middle of the road." Is it Past Perfect Continuous? Commented Sep 2, 2020 at 14:30
  • This sentence sounds odd on its own for that reason, but the “other action” could be in the next sentence. Context matters.
    – StephenS
    Commented Sep 2, 2020 at 15:23

2 Answers 2

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The shortened word is indeed "had". "Would" is also abbreviated this way, but makes no sense here.

The past perfect continuous tense refers to something that continued (in this case driving) before something else in the past. Nothing else is specifically mentioned, so the later time is the time that the sentence is set.

Because narratives are usually in past tense, and there is no specific later time mentioned in the sentence, your sentence sounds much like a sentence from a narrative, as I implied in my comment.

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It's "had", as you suspect, and this is indeed the past perfect continuous (or "past perfect progressive") tense. I'm not sure what you mean by "two actions". There are already two verbs here: "been" (past participle of "be") and "driving" (present participle of "drive"). It doesn't require another one.

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