| Notice the difference in meaning:
| When he stopped laughing, everyone left.
(they left after he stopped laughing)
When he stopped laughing, everyone had left. (they left before he stopped laughing)
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| We use past perfect when we are already talking about the past, and we want to go back to an earlier past time ('double past').
| By the time I got to the station, the train had left.
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| Compare this with:
When we talk about a sequence of past events in the chronological order, we more commonly use past simple, especially with quick, short actions.
|
The train left five minutes before I got to the station.
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| When we use a time expression (e.g. after, as soon as, before, by the time, when) to say that one event happened after another, we use either past simple or past perfect
for the event that happened first:
| After Mike (had) finished reading, he put out the light.
When Carol (had) finished her dinner, she went to bed.
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| But to emphasise that the second event is the result of the first, we prefer past simple for both:
| She became famous after she appeared on the TV programme.
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| With already and just (=a very short time before) we use past perfect, not past simple:
| She had just stepped into the office when the telephone rang.
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| · Past perfect is not used simply to describe an event in the distant past.
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