Example sentences of "had [adv] been [v-ing] [noun pl] " in BNC.
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| 1 | The photographer had obviously been studying portraits of Betty Grable and other film stars and was trying to be very artistic , with much back lighting and fluffing out of hair , and I must admit that my hair ( touching my shoulders , naturally ) , did look nice . |
| 2 | Before the move he had already been planting exotics in the sheltered garden with a slope to the south-west ; an ideal situation for the rare trees he collected over the next twenty years . |
| 3 | As soon as she entered the room she knew that Clare had already been telling tales ; or at least complaining to her colleagues . |
| 4 | In later life he seems to have returned to his early interest in astronomy ( on which he had already been writing papers at the age of eighteen ) . |
| 5 | THOSE OF you who remember Sly & Robbie 's so-called golden period , when students would approach reggae DJs and ask for ‘ something by Sly & Robbie ’ when the DJ had already been playing records driven by them all night , had better get used to some changes . |
| 6 | The findings pointed to a lack of training for social services staff and suggested senior SSD managers had not been providing workers or users with information about the changes . |
| 7 | And then … as if people had not been hearing things since Noah hit his thumb with a hammer , SOUND arrived . |
| 8 | She knew Penny had not been raiding apples , but she had n't convinced Farmer Bolsover of it . |
| 9 | There was a movement within the Trees , the sudden shifting of green and gold and russet , so that Floy knew the dusk had not been playing tricks after all . |
| 10 | The headmistress and the governors of the school named were justly irate , for , they stated with concerted vehemence , no child had witnessed the recovery of the body of a murder victim from the canal : those children who had not been making stegosauruses out of old egg boxes had been learning an Ashanti war dance , and not one had been in the playground , which was the only vantage point from which body recovery would be observable . |
| 11 | He had had his own darkroom , and had always been taking pictures . |
| 12 | Makeshift barriers closed off corridors , marking out the territory of rival gangs , while elsewhere emergency doors had been removed and new corridors created through what had once been living quarters . |
| 13 | And Leo had also been taking steps to revivify the influence of religion at other levels . |
| 14 | I had also been having problems with my gut . |
| 15 | Quite unwittingly you played right into my hands that night , Aurora — I knew you had n't been taking drugs , but it gave me the perfect excuse for sticking around . |
| 16 | Frying-pan in hand , she is saying she has nothing for us , she had n't been expecting customers ; at this time of year there are visitors only at weekends . |
| 17 | She knew with total certainty that her imagination had n't been playing tricks , and that it was the second time in only a few minutes that she 'd heard those precise words . |
| 18 | In the 1950s , attention was directed to the fact that manual workers had increasingly been earning wages directly comparable to those of white-collar and supervisory staff . |
| 19 | The local Phalangist headquarters were deserted but a Syrian officer , who had earlier been distributing leaflets describing the Syrian army as ‘ an envoy of brotherly love and peace ’ , brusquely jumped down from his tank and uprooted a Phalangist sign designating Kahhale a military zone . |
| 20 | I had recently been representing consumers on the National Consumer Council , as well as chairing the National Gas Consumers ' Council . |