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Are these two sentences same?

With the exception of Rob and me, everyone in the class finished the assignment before the teacher came.

With the exception of Rob and me, everyone in the class had finished the assignment before the teacher came.

On searching, I found that "had finished" is the correct usage. Is it because it is followed by "before the teacher came"?

If I remove the "before the teacher came" from the first sentence, to make it-

With the exception of Rob and me, everyone in the class finished the assignment.

will it be (grammatically) correct?

S. Gupta
  • 95

1 Answers1

4

Both are fully grammatical, and both are fully idiomatic. They can be used in identical circumstances.

The difference (which is slight) is in where the temporal focus lies. When you use a past perfect form such as "had finished", you are focussing the narrative on a point in the past, but later than the event of finishing; if you use the simple past, you are not focussing in this way - there may be no point of focus, or it may be any time.

Since there is a "when" clause here, that is the natural point of focus, so there is usually no practical difference between the two.

Colin Fine
  • 77,173