The perfect continuous tenses in English: What are they and how to use them?

Perfect continuous tenses in English use both the auxiliary verb have and the auxiliary verb be. Perfect continuous verbs can be past, present, or future.

Like perfect tenses, perfect continuous verbs describe an event that started before some other particular action or moment.

Like continuous tenses, perfect continuous verbs describe an event that lasts for some significant time.

If that sounds a little complicated, don’t worry! You can definitely master the perfect continuous tenses by the end of this post! We’ll talk about what the perfect continuous is, how to form a perfect continuous verb, when to use them, and what’s the difference between perfect continuous and other verb forms!

The perfect continuous tenses (also sometimes called perfect progressive tenses) are forms of verbs that we use for an event that started before some other particular time, and has lasted or repeated for a significant time:

Present perfect continuous, past perfect continuous, and future perfect continuous all use this formula:

To form the different tenses, just conjugate have:

• Present continuous: use have/has:

  have / has

  

  been

  

  present participle

  I have been waiting for five minutes.

  She has been waiting for five minutes.

• Present continuous: use had:

  had

  

  been

  

  present participle

  Harry had been sitting on the bench when it started to rain.

• Future continuous: use will have:

  will have

  

  been

  

  present participle

  By next year, Maggie will have been working here for ten years.

To make a perfect continuous verb negative, you put the word notafter the first auxiliary verb. This first auxiliary verb is either haveor ,will depending on the tense:

• Past / Present Perfect Continuous: first auxiliary is have:

  first auxiliary

  No, I have not been waiting long.

  Michael stayed home from work yesterday because he had not been feeling well.

• Future Perfect Continuous: first auxiliary is will:

  first auxiliary

  When the movie starts, I will not have been waiting for long.

To form a question using a perfect continuous verb, reverse the position of the first auxiliary verb and the subject. Again, this first auxiliary verb is either have or will, depending on the tense:

• Past / Present Perfect Continuous: first auxiliary is have

  have / has / had

  

  subject

  

  been

  

  present participle

  Have you been sleeping well?

  Has Rudolph been studying for the exam?

  Who had they been talking to?

• Future perfect continuous: first auxiliary is will:

  will

  

  subject

  

  have

  

  been

  

  present participle

  Will he have been waiting for a long time?

  What will you have been studying?

You can generally use these rules for both wh-questions and yes-no questions, but to learn the full rules, check out our post on forming questions in English!

All three perfect continuous tenses describe an action that started before some particular time or moment (past, present, or future), and that continued for some time. For example:

• I had been playing soccer for 2 hours when my mother came home.

  It continued for 2 hours before the mother came home.
• I have been playing soccer for 2 hours.

  It continued for two hours before the present moment.
• I will have been playing soccer for 2 hours by the time my mother comes home.

  Before the mother comes home (in the future) it will continue for 2 hours.

Usually we assume that a perfect continuous action is unfinished at our past, present, or future reference time:

In English, actions in perfect tenses and perfect continuous tenses always start before some particular past, present, or future moment. The difference is that a perfect tense usually focuses on a finished result of some action, while a perfect continuous tense implies that that action is not finished. Let’s compare!

• Present perfect continuous vs. present perfect

  • We have been cooking dinner.

    Assumption: The dinner is not ready to eat (= not finished).
  • We have cooked dinner.

    Assumption: The dinner is ready to eat (= finished).

• Present perfect continuous vs. present perfect

  • He’d been writing a letter before she arrived.

    Assumption: The letter is not finished yet.
  • He’d written a letter before she arrived.

    Assumption: The letter is finished.

HOWEVER, when a perfect tense is used with for, since, or all (which describe a duration) the perfect tenses can also be used for unfinished actions. For example:

With these time markers, there is very little difference in meaning between the perfect and the perfect continuous, though there can be a slight difference in focus:

• The perfect focuses more on the results of doing that action for so long:

  She has worked at this bank for 10 years.

  ...so she now has lots of experience. (focus on results)

• The perfect continuous is focused on the process of doing that action for so long:

  She has been working at this bank for 10 years.

  …and in that time, lots of things have happened. (focus on the process)

To see the perfect continuous tenses compared with more English verb tenses, check out this English tense comparison sheet!

In this post, we’ve talked all about perfect continuous verbs! Here’s all the important information you need to know about the perfect continuous:

• The rule for all three perfect continuous tenses is:

  have/had/will have

  

  been

  

  present participle

  • To form the past perfect continuous, use had.

  • To form the present perfect continuous, use have / has.

  • To form the future perfect continuous, use will have.

• Like the perfect tenses, a perfect continuous action starts before some particular time (past, present, or future).

• Unlike the perfect tenses, a perfect continuous action is almost always unfinished at some past moment.

• Like the continuous tenses, a perfect continuous action continues or repeats for some amount of time.

• Unlike the continuous tenses, a perfect continuous action focuses on time before the main action in a story.

Now you are free to go off into the world and use the perfect continuous tenses in English! Or, maybe it’s time to test your knowledge with these perfect continuous tense activities!