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Is the conversation below correct in past tense?

Girl: Why are u leaving now?
Boy: I had asked you to come at 6 o'clock but you came at 7 o'clock. It's late now.

Can I use past perfect tense here?

This is because asking to come at 6 o'clock is the first action and coming at 7 o'clock is the second action.

stangdon
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user4084
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    Using **past perfect** is fine, but usually the **simple past** ("I asked you") would be used because it's, well, simpler... – Peter Feb 04 '16 at 14:42
  • When the action happened right after another and it's clear which action happened before another action, you don't need to use past perfect. – Schwale Feb 04 '16 at 14:57
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    You *could* use the past perfect and probably nobody would care, but it's not really the most correct. We use the past perfect to relate one past event to another past event. I know this seems like that, but it isn't really, because you could break it into complete two sentences: **I asked you to come at 6. You came at 7.** The past perfect would be used in a case like **I had asked you to come at 6 *before* I knew you couldn't make it.** – stangdon Feb 04 '16 at 15:09
  • I think in normal colloquial speech Past Perfect is seldom used. It is mainly a tense of written, mostly elevated language. Handling past tense in normal speech is not practical. – rogermue Feb 04 '16 at 21:25

2 Answers2

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Whether it's formal or informal English, you usually use the past perfect tense when you think it's necessary to make it clear as to what action happened earlier to another action in the past. However, if it's clear from the sense of a sentence that an action followed another action in the past, it's more idiomatic to use both actions in the simple past. If you look at the following sentences, the use of the past perfect and the past will be clear:

I asked you to come at 6 o'clock, but you came at 7 o'clock.

Yesterday, I came to see you, but you had left the office,

Khan
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Past perfect would be correct if all the actions discussed were in the past: "Why did you leave?" and "It was late."

However, simple perfect would work just as well and what most people would use.

BlueDot
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