I was looking/looked .... until

Question

Hello,I'm doing an exercise on narrative tenses and I have a problem with this sentence."I ..... (look) for them everywhere unitl it suddenly occured to me that they had already checked in ..."I thought that "was looking" is the right answer, but according to the key "looked" is the one.Could you please explain why? After all, the person was in the process of looking when a thought occured to him.Thank you

Air panda · Accepted Answer

I think that the answer should be "was looking" since you were continuing to look until the though happened to interrupt your looking.

CalifJim · Answer

Hotmaleaccording to the key "looked" is the one.

Right. The pattern is VERB+ed until ... if you say that you did one thing up to the time when another thing happened.

I waited until the bus came.
The boys played baseball until it was time for dinner.
The police searched for the missing woman until dawn.
Edward worked for IBM until he grew tired of it and found another job.
They stood at the restaurant door until their friends showed up; then they all went in together.

Don't confuse this with the situation where something happens that interrupts another action. These typically have 'when'.

We were watching TV when lightening struck the roof.
They were waiting for the bus in the rain when a car raced by and splashed water on them.
Jack was working in the front yard when an old friend of his unexpectedly dropped by.

In a completely different pattern, They were waiting until a car raced by suggests that they intended to wait only until then, and once a car raced by, they would be finished waiting. Similarly,

People were waiting until they saw what the tax rates were going to be before deciding how to invest.

CJ

I was looking/looked .... until

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