Is past perfect tense commonly used in everyday English?
I personally do, when necessary. However, in American English, they’re not very frequently used. Here’s a very simple explanation: The Past Perfect expresses the idea that something occurred before another action in the past. It can also show that something happened before a specific time in the past. Yesterday at 3 o’clock. I wrote a letter to Jack. Yesterday at 5 o’clock. I spoke to Jack. When I spoke to Jack, I had already written a letter to him. You use the Past Perfect to speak about the first action in time. In my example, what happened first is ‘I wrote …’, so when I connect both sentences I change to ‘I had written…’ If you need more examples to understand this, go to this website. I found them quite easy to understand.
