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Is it correct to say?

I got burned 2 weeks ago and got scorch on my hand. It hadn't been getting better until 1 week had passed

should I use past perfect at the end or would simple past be more correct?

I got burned 2 weeks ago and got scorch on my hand. It hadn't been getting better until 1 week passed

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    It would be better to say It didn't start to get better until a week had passed (or simply for a week). Dec 10, 2020 at 9:39

2 Answers 2

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“I got burned 2 weeks ago and got scorch on my hand. It hadn't been getting better until 1 week had passed”

A better way to say this: “I got burned 2 weeks ago and scorched my hand. It didn’t start to get better until a week had passed”

An alternative: “I had burnt my myself 2 weeks ago and scorched my hand. It didn’t start to get better until a week had passed”

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I got burned 2 weeks ago and got scorch on my hand. It hadn't been getting better until 1 week had passed

A proposed choice:

"I got burned 2 weeks ago and scorched my hand. It didn't start to get better for a week."

Why do we use this different wording? There is definitely a logical reason, however to a native speaker, one just sounds "better" than the other. To analyze a bit further: the "start" of a process is not continuous. It is more or less instantaneous. Thus, you would not use the past perfect continuous tense (had been) to describe a start.

Regarding scorch versus scorched: a Google Books Ngram search for "got scorch" shows 0 results. It's more common to use scorch in the verb form, where scorched is the past participle.

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