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Anonymous Posted 10 years ago
Grammar

past perfect or present perfect

what tense should be used in the sentence:
Today by 5 o'clock I (have or had?) done my home assignment.
  

Top answer

For a short period at or just after 5 o'clock the present perfect is possible, though your word order isn't the most natural. ". Thereafter, in conversation you would often use the simple past: "I did/finished my home assignment by 5 o'clock today".

— GPY

  • For a short period at or just after 5 o'clock the present perfect is possible, though your word order isn't the most natural.
  • ".
  • Thereafter, in conversation you would often use the simple past: "I did/finished my home assignment by 5 o'clock today".
  • If you want to use the past perfect, the word order "By 5 o'clock today I had done my home assignment" seems more natural than your suggestion.
  • This sentence is fine, but it is more "complicated" and probably more for written English.
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7 Answers
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For a short period at or just after 5 o'clock the present perfect is possible, though your word order isn't the most natural. You would more likely say "I've done/finished my home assignment by 5 o'clock today!".

Thereafter, in conversation you would often use the simple past: "I did/finished my home assignment by 5 o'clock today". If you want to use the past perfect, the word order "By 5
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thanks for the answer! i was more interested in tenses than in word order, but thanks for that as well )) so, basically we can use present perfect, past simple or past perfect, right? what's the difference between present perfect and past perfect in this case?
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Anonymouswhat tense
The most useful ones are these:

Before 5: I will [have done / do] my assignment by 5 o'clock (today).
After 5: I [had done / did] my assignment by 5 o'clock (today).

I'd say that the simple tenses are more suitable than the perfect tenses.

CJ
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let's imagine it's 10 pm now. in a sentence like "by the time he came in at 5 pm, i had finished my home assignment" i would use past perfect, because there are two actions in the past, even though they have happened today, it's clear that it's already past. but in a sentence like "by 5 o'clock today" we do not have another action, we just have time, so i'm not sure whether we should define "fini
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Anonymousin a sentence like "by 5 o'clock today" we do not have another action, we just have time, so i'm not sure whether we should define "finishing home assignment" as an action before a certain point of time in the pas
You don't have to define it that way. There could be other sentences that precede the one given, and those sentences might contain referen
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Anonymous let's imagine it's 10 pm now. in a sentence like "by the time he came in at 5 pm, i had finished my home assignment" i would use past perfect, because there are two actions in the past, even though they have happened today, it's clear that it's already past. but in a sentence like "by 5 o'clock today" we do not have another action, we just have time, so i'm not
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Thank you, I appreciate your answers a lot!
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