ShmoopTube

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Here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by the past perfect tense. It's probably not

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as perfect as it thinks it is.

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What should replace the underlined words below?

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I had began to sing when she stopped me hurriedly.

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In this sentence, we'll need to determine the proper forms of two verbs, so we'll have

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to do a little multitasking.

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We hope this goes better than the time we tried to fry an egg and talk on the phone

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at the same time.

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Luckily, the helping verb "had" is around to give us a helping hand, so it shouldn't

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be too much of a chore.

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Since we have a helping verb, we know that we need the past participle 'begun" to go

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along with it.

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Therefore we can cross out both (A) and (B), which use the present tense "began."

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Sorry, fellas, but you're just too independent to appreciate Had's overly helpful ways.

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Both (C) and (D) use the past participle "begun," so we're going to have to look at the second

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half of the sentence to eliminate one of them.

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Looks like (D) is the one to go because "had begun to sing" signals that the other verb

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in the sentence is in the past tense, not the past perfect tense.

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That leaves us with choice (C), which correctly uses the past perfect and then the past tense

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to let us know just how hurriedly this guy got silenced when he tried to sing.

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Sounds like our weekly office karaoke party.

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