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I want to ask y'all about my problem that when we say "he had been good" we use past perfect continuous tense but we pretend that we are using past perfect tense and, if we say "she had been bad" we pretend it's on past perfect tense but how does it work?

I mean when we search or ask that it's passive or active, we got answer that these are in active tense then why we are using had been instead of had?

One more example is "the man had been flooded out". This shows like it's passive everywhere but we haven't used any thing like "by" "to" "with" etc.

So my question is when to do something like that where we have to use past continuous instead of past simple and when to use past perfect continuous instead of past perfect and so on? Even the example I gave you is showing that isn't in passive voice.

Is there any specify rule that when we express condition, stage and quality we have to use the next tense instead of real?

one more question is remaining in my mind that can we convert any sentences into passive voice without using by, with and to etc becuz i have seen many sentences without these things. One example is "the function has been disabled" in it i haven't used any of them.

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  • As I explained in response to your question on ELU, "good" is an adjective, not a verb. This is nothing to do with the continuous tense. Commented May 26 at 13:23
  • Oh! I didn't notice it though, one more question is remaining in my mind that can we convert any sentences into passive voice without using by, with and to etc becuz i have seen many sentences without these things
    – Joseph
    Commented May 26 at 13:26
  • One example is "the function has been disabled" in it i haven't used any of them.
    – Joseph
    Commented May 26 at 13:34
  • We don't know who it was disabled by; presumably someone managing a website. Commented May 26 at 13:40
  • You are talking about tenses of a verb, misuing a simple adjective and mixing up passive sentences and active sentences. Perhaps you need to revisit your question.
    – Lambie
    Commented May 26 at 14:24

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In He had been good, 'good' is an adjective describing what he was like in the past.

He had been waiting is the continuous tense.

He had been flooded out is the passive voice. There is no need to use a preposition such as by, because it's obvious that it was water that did the flooding.

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  • Got it. Thank very much for your help. 😊
    – Joseph
    Commented May 26 at 13:47

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