Re: had been delivering

cúigiú --------  looks a bit like  Chee-gyuu   w w w
On 5/26/2024 11:09 AM, Aidan Kehoe wrote:

   Ar an cúigiú lá is fiche de mí Bealtaine, scríobh navi:
   > 1) Tom had been delivering pizzas before he started working as a
  > security guard.

The canonical use of  [had been]  is
             Tom had been delivering pizzas for 3 years [,]
               when he got his 2nd job as a part-time security guard.
i think you 'd  be better off  studying the
variations of:
                 I'd waited in the station for 10 minutes
                       when the train arrived.
                 I was waiting ...
                 I had been waiting....

  >
  > I can see three possibilities:
  >
  > a) He started working as a security guard right after he stopped
  > delivering pizzas.
  >
  > b) There was a time lapse between the time he stopped delivering pizzas
  > and the time he started working as a security guard.
  >
  > c) He kept on delivering pizzas after he started working as a security
  > guard.
  >
  > Which of the cases 1-3 can correspond to (a)?
 Do you mean ‘which of the cases a-c can correspond to (1)?’
 For me a-c are all consistent with 1), but a) is most likely. It’s the sort of
phrasing that will probably be from a journalist, and that has the difficulty
these days that journalists are routinely idiots and their editors seem less
likely to pick up their mistakes than they were.