until recently+present perfect progressive

[ostap77]

"I have an Epson Stylus C88 printer, and it has been working for a while until recently. When I print, there are horizontal lines across the picture.''

Could I use the past progressive here for the present perfect progressive?

 

[emsr2d2]

"I have an Epson Stylus C88 printer, and it has been working [STRIKE]for a while[/STRIKE] fine/well until recently. When I print, there are horizontal lines across the picture.''

Could I use the past progressive here for the present perfect progressive?

It sounds OK to me.

My TV has been working well until just recently but now there are lines across the picture when I print.

 

[5jj]

"I have an Epson Stylus C88 printer, and it has been working for a while until recently. When I print, there are horizontal lines across the picture.''

Could I use the past progressive here for the present perfect progressive?

Ostap, you can do pretty well anything you want if you feel like it.

In this particular example (note that: in this particular example), my first choice would would be 'was working'; I don't have any great objection to 'has been working'; I would not dream of saying 'had been working'. But yes - before you ask- there is almost certainly a case to be made for the past perfect progressive here. But not by me.

 

[ostap77]

Ostap, you can do pretty well anything you want if you feel like it.

In this particular example (note that: in this particular example), my first choice would would be 'was working'; I don't have any great objection to 'has been working'; I would not dream of saying 'had been working'. But yes - before you ask- there is almost certainly a case to be made for the past perfect progressive here. But not by me.

I'm confused by the use of the present perfect progressive. "Until recently" sounds like a moment in the past. The action doesn't extend up to the moment of speaking.

 

[5jj]

I'm confused by the use of the present perfect progressive. "Until recently" sounds like a moment in the past. The action doesn't extend up to the moment of speaking.

When we are speaking normally, we often start a sentence without knowing how it will finish; we change our minds in mid-utterance without realising that we have changed our minds. Most of us are unlikely to write, when we have time to think about what we are committing to paper, " it has been working for a while until recently". In conversation and informal writing, it passes unnnoticed.

 

[emsr2d2]

Having re-read my original post, I do now think that "...had been working well until recently..." sounds better but "...has been..." doesn't sound wrong.

 

[Tdol]

It reads like the kind of writing used on forums and online that is close to spoken language- I wouldn't use the present perfect progressive in a letter of complaint, but someone narrating the events on a printer help page might- the past perfect might appear to make it sound more distant. For a while until now sounds strange- it's wordy and vague, so it could be someone writing fast and not checking their work or a non-native speaker.