THE three perfect tenses in English — the present perfect, the past perfect, and the future perfect — capture the idea that one event or occurrence happened or happens before another time or event in the present, past, or future. These tenses are achieved grammatically by using a form of the verb "have" together with the past participle* of the main verb, then using the formula "Subject + (have/has/had/will have) + past participle" to form the sentence.
The present perfect tense specifically refers to an event that occurred in an unspecified past time, in which the action has been completed but the time period is not or is of an indefinite duration. We can understand this concept more clearly by looking at the timeline of the present perfect tense shown below:
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