Future Perfect Continuous

The future perfect continuous
         a. Use
         b. Formation
         c. Questions and negative statements

 

6. The future perfect continuous
a. Use
The Future Perfect Continuous tense is used to express a continuous, ongoing action which will be completed by a certain time in the future. In the following examples, the verbs in the Future Perfect Continuous tense are underlined.
e.g. By next January, she will have been living here for a year.
      You will have been traveling a great deal by the time you return home.
      He will have been working for ten months by the time he takes his vacation.

In these examples, the use of the Future Perfect Continuous indicates that the continuous, ongoing actions of living, traveling, and working, will have been completed before the events of the coming of January, your returning home, and his taking a vacation, take place.

b. Formation
The Future Perfect Continuous of any verb is formed from the Future Perfect of the auxiliary to be, followed by the present participle of the verb. For instance, the Future Perfect Continuous of the verb to work is conjugated as follows:

I will (shall) have been working

you will have been working

he will have been working

she will have been working

it will have been working

we will (shall) have been working

they will have been working

c. Questions and negative statements
As is the case with other English tenses, questions and negative statements in the Future Perfect Continuous are formed using the first auxiliary.

Questions are formed by placing the first auxiliary before the subject. For example:

Affirmative Statement	Question
It will have been working.	Will it have been working?
They will have been working.	Will they have been working?

Negative statements are formed by placing the word not after the first auxiliary. For example:

Affirmative Statement	Negative Statement
It will have been working.	It will not have been working.
They will have been working.	They will not have been working.

Negative questions are formed by placing the first auxiliary before the subject, and the word not after the subject. However, when contractions are used, the contracted form of not immediately follows the first auxiliary. For example:

Without Contractions	With Contractions
Will it not have been working?	Won't it have been working?
Will they not have been working?	Won't they have been working?

Tag questions are formed using the first auxiliary. In the following examples, the negative tag questions are underlined. Contractions are usually used in negative tag questions. For example:

Affirmative Statement	Affirmative Statement with Tag Question
It will have been working.	It will have been working, won't it?
They will have been working.	They will have been working, won't they?