Past simple or past perfect
Five years ago, I was stalked for six months by a girl I had barely known for a year. We had dated for a while but broke/had broken up.
Just to clear things up, they dated before the girl decided to stalk the guy.
My question is, what tense should I use with "to break up"? "broke" is the only thing that sounds correct to me, so does that mean it's okay to introduce the past perfect with "had dated" and then continue using the past simple?
Top answer
In this case you can use either "broke" or "had broken". Because the past perfect is a "complicated" and relatively cumbersome tense, it can be tiresome to use it repeatedly through a long passage of text. For this reason, writers may, as you say, slip back into the past simple.
- In this case you can use either "broke" or "had broken".
- Because the past perfect is a "complicated" and relatively cumbersome tense, it can be tiresome to use it repeatedly through a long passage of text.
- For this reason, writers may, as you say, slip back into the past simple.
- However, in your example you have only a few verbs, so the past perfect is not too much.
- If you were to carry on at greater length describing events during the time before the stalking occurred, then probably you would want to revert to the simple past.
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In this case you can use either "broke" or "had broken". Because the past perfect is a "complicated" and relatively cumbersome tense, it can be tiresome to use it repeatedly through a long passage of text. For this reason, writers may, as you say, slip back into the past simple. However, in your example you have only a few verbs, so the past perfect is not too much. If you were to carry on at
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