OptimusPrepJanielle wrote:
Before the storm destroyed much of the harbor, this town, with its sandy beaches and multiple opportunities for sports, had been one of the most popular resort destinations on the East Coast.
A)had been Since we have the cue "before," the past perfect isn't necessary to indicate which action took place.
E)was
OptimusPrepJanielle: There's one explanation on this forum that seems to contradict what you say, which is why I'm confused.
Found in the following link:
has-have-had-been-difference-185791.html"Before the teacher entered the room, John had been cheating on the exam." (First, John was in the act of cheating on the exam. Later, the teacher walked in. Did John stop because the teacher walked in? Or had he already stopped for some other reason before she walked in? We don't know - but the OG prefers to interpret this as: John cheated. Then John stopped. Then the teacher walked into the room.)According to the above, with the use of "before", (A) and (E) are equivalent. That still leads us to at least three different justifications, 2 for (E) and 1 for (A), depending on what takes priority:
1. Be
concise, (E) correct: (A) is grammatically correct, and (E) takes priority only because it's less wordy and slightly less redundant (if at all).
2. Go with what we
know, (E) correct: "Was" and "had been" are still different, because in the example above,
John "was" cheating before the teacher walked in, may mean he was cheating at one time, say, 1 hour beforehand. Whereas,
John "had been" cheating before the teacher walked in means John cheated on the exam
for a while or for an unknown duration up until
and because the teacher walked in. In which case, (E) changes the meaning of (A), and we accept (E) only because there is no way to know for sure how long something was going on before the storm, since the past duration and even cause is
exactly what we're correcting in the sentence. Therefore, (E) is at least true, and (A) is possible but not known 100%.
3. Preserve
Meaning, (A) correct: In contrast to (2), if we were to accept the original sentence's
meaning, then (A)
must be true, and (E) must be false, because there was an unknown duration of X before Y, and the storm directly causes X's duration to stop; it's not simply a one time occurrence of X sometime before the storm with a causal relationship not necessarily existing - only a temporal relationship is established by the word "before". For example, "Before the war, I
was a singer, a dancer, and a mathematician." This only means sometime before the war, one was a singer, a dancer, and a mathematician, and not necessarily that the war caused one to cease being a singer, dancer, and mathematician. One could just be recalling a memory from long ago, and the war is just a major life event or reference point to recall a memory.
The real question is, whose question is this?
OG? Manhattan?
Magoosh? If it's from
OG, then whatever the justification, go with their rule. If it's another's example, then it's still confusing. In that case, we'll need a different
OG example in the same sort of setup (e.g. had been vs. was, "before" used, "had been"/"was" is underlined for correction) to clarify this matter.