past perfect tense and present perfect tense

hi,

i'm always confused about which perfect tense should i choose when writing about something that happened in the past and continued until an unspecified time. For example,

'Since the 1980s, the number of Clientele users has/had grown from a mere 1000 to a remarkable 1 billion.' And let's say that we don't know for how long will this number continue to grow.

From what i know that both perfect tenses represent the fact that the actions took place from the past and might or might not continue at present.

Can someone please clarify this?

Thanks

present perfect tense or continuous

you can use either present perfect or continuous in your sentence

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sebayanpendam

hi,

i'm always confused about which perfect tense should i choose when writing about something that happened in the past and continued until an unspecified time. For example,

'Since the 1980s, the number of Clientele users has/had grown from a mere 1000 to a remarkable 1 billion.' And let's say that we don't know for how long will this number continue to grow.

From what i know that both perfect tenses represent the fact that the actions took place from the past and might or might not continue at present.

Can someone please clarify this?

Thanks

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'Since the 1980s, the number of Clientele users has/had grown from a mere 1000 to a remarkable 1 billion.'
The only possible auxilliary in this sentence is "has", "had" is wrong and present perfect continuous would not be appropriate here.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by sebayanpendam

hi,
From what i know that both perfect tenses represent the fact that the actions took place from the past and might or might not continue at present.

Can someone please clarify this?

Thanks

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Not exactly.
The Present Perfect Tense denotes the actions that have started in the past and are still going on or have just finished.

The Past Perfect Tense denotes the actions that started and finished in the past before another past action.