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From: HenHanna <HenHanna@devnull.tb>
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english,sci.lang
Subject: Re: had been delivering
Date: Sun, 26 May 2024 14:59:11 -0700
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
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cúigiú --------  looks a bit like  Chee-gyuu   w w w

On 5/26/2024 11:09 AM, Aidan Kehoe wrote:
> 
>   Ar an cúigiú lá is fiche de mí Bealtaine, scríobh navi:
> 
>   > 1) Tom had been delivering pizzas before he started working as a
>   > security guard.


The canonical use of  [had been]  is

             Tom had been delivering pizzas for 3 years [,]
               when he got his 2nd job as a part-time security guard.

i think you 'd  be better off  studying the
variations of:

                 I'd waited in the station for 10 minutes
                       when the train arrived.

                 I was waiting ...
                 I had been waiting....


>   >
>   > I can see three possibilities:
>   >
>   > a) He started working as a security guard right after he stopped
>   > delivering pizzas.
>   >
>   > b) There was a time lapse between the time he stopped delivering pizzas
>   > and the time he started working as a security guard.
>   >
>   > c) He kept on delivering pizzas after he started working as a security
>   > guard.
>   >
>   > Which of the cases 1-3 can correspond to (a)?
> 
> Do you mean ‘which of the cases a-c can correspond to (1)?’
> 
> For me a-c are all consistent with 1), but a) is most likely. It’s the sort of
> phrasing that will probably be from a journalist, and that has the difficulty
> these days that journalists are routinely idiots and their editors seem less
> likely to pick up their mistakes than they were.
>