Past perfect continuous We use the past perfect continuous to look back at a situation in progress. It was a good time to invest. Inflation had been falling for several months. Before I changed jobs, I had been working on a plan to reduce production costs. We had been thinking about buying a new house but then we decided to stay here. We use it to say what had been happening before something else happened. It had been snowing for a while before we left. We had been playing tennis for only a few minutes when it started raining. He was out of breath when he arrived because he had been running. We use it when reporting things said in the past. She said she had been trying to call me all day. They said they had been shopping. I told you I had been looking for some new clothes