Best way to use past perfect in these scenarios?

Question

Hi,

Wondering, what's the best way to use a Past perfect if:
1. We have 3 related events? Does only the earliest one get the Past perfect, with the other being in simple past?
2. we have 2 events in a sentence, with one marked by a time marker and other being the earlier event, for e.g. "By 1970, X had finished his research after he had read all the research papers".

Thanks

bb · Answer

GMAT generally shies away from past perfect. It will only test it and use it correctly when it’s pretty clear that you should be using past perfect in which case there is a specific marker for time such as after or before and both events have taken place in the past. Past perfect is used simply to indicate that one event preceded the other. I have never seen a question with three events but I also haven’t been paying a lot of attention so it’s possible that or maybe three… GMAT is very shy about past perfect in my experience.

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Posted from my mobile device

bb · Answer

Here is a screenshot from the GMAT Club's Grammar Book , which is free to download and has 270 pages of goodness, touching on the Past Perfect. That is all I had to know about it for my GMAT Journey

past-perfect-1.png past-perfect-2.png

MartyTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi TargetMBA007.

One thing to keep in mind is that, the point in answering SC questions is to find clear flaws in sentences to eliminate choices.

So, the GMAT is not going to present sentence versions that mention three events and force us to have in mind some ideal way of presenting three events.

Rather, the sentence versions will be either clearly logical or clearly illogical.

So, you don't need to worry about knowing the ideal answers to the questions you asked above. Rather, you can plan to analyze the sentence versions you see on a case by case basis to determine whether the use of the past perfect in them is logical, which should be pretty clear if you understand the basics of how the past perfect works.

TargetMBA007 · Answer

Thanks  bb  and  MartyTargetTestPrep

Very helpful!

GMATWhizTeam · Answer

Hi  TargetMBA007

You may find these links helpful:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nm4EW0d3G8k   
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsHCNjr5ARI

Best way to use past perfect in these scenarios?

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