Learn English – “had seen” vs “saw” which is correct and why other not

past-perfecttense

Among the below two Which is the correct sentence?

He saw me yesterday.

Vs.

He had seen me yesterday.

I know that we use past perfect tense to express an incident whose effect is still present. So is had been correct?

Best Answer

Typically we use the past simple (saw) for events in the past and the past perfect (had seen) for events further in the past. For example, you could say:

I had seen my brother asleep when I left home in the morning, but then later I saw him at the bank.

You'll need to give us more context for these sentences to know which one would be more correct, because they can both be used in different situations.