Present and Past Tenses Overview

5. Summary of the formation of the English present and past tenses
The following table summarizes the formation of the English present and past tenses.

Tense	Auxiliary	Verb Form
Simple Present	do/does *	bare infinitive **
Present Continuous	am/is/are	present participle
Present Perfect	have/has	past participle
Present Perfect Continuous	have/has  been	present participle
Simple Past	did *	bare infinitive ***
Past Continuous	was/were	present participle
Past Perfect	had	past participle
Past Perfect Continuous	had been	present participle

* In the Simple Present and Simple Past tenses, the auxiliaries are used only for emphasis, and for the formation of questions and negative statements. Auxiliaries are never used with the Simple Present or Simple Past of the verb to be.

** When used without the auxiliary, the third person singular of the Simple Present has the ending s.

*** When the verb is used without the auxiliary, the Simple Past form of the verb is used. For regular verbs, and fo