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16 Future Perfect

The Future is the tense used to talk about future events. {see Future Simple, A2 Level}

The Future Perfect Tense is used to talk about a completed action in the future.

Affirmative form

The Affirmative form has this structure:
Subject + auxiliary verb (will) + auxiliary verb (have) + past participle.

SUBJECT AUXILIARY VERB (WILL) AUXILIARY VERB (HAVE) PAST PARTICIPLE
I/You/He/She/It/We/They will have walked

Negative form

The Negative form has this structure:
Subject + auxiliary verb (will) not + auxiliary verb (have) + past participle.

SUBJECT AUXILIARY VERB (WILL) (w/ NEGATION)
AUXILIARY VERB (HAVE) PAST PARTICIPLE
I/You/He/She/It/We/They will not* have walked

*Short version of the negative form is: “won’t have

Interrogative form

The Interrogative form has this structure:
Auxiliary verb (will) + subject + auxiliary verb (have) + past participle + (?).

AUXILIARY VERB (WILL) SUBJECT AUXILIARY VERB (HAVE) PAST PARTICIPLE QUESTION MARK
Will I/You/He/She/It/We/They have walked ?
  • I will have been in army 2 years later.
  • James will have distributed the money equally.
  • We will have notified the customers about our decisions.
  • James won’t have distributed the money equally.
  • Will James have distributed the money equally?

When we use this tense we are projecting ourselves forward into the future and looking back at an action that will be completed some time later than now.

We use Future Perfect to:

  • Talk about an action that will be completed before a certain time in future;
  • Predict what has probably happened.

We usually use future time word by in this tense to give the meaning of “not later than”.