I meant to ring you before you left, or before you leaving, or?

English as a Second Language English Vocabulary, Grammar and Idioms
1

I don’t know what is right.

I meant to ring you before you left.
or
I meant to ring you before you leaving.
or
what???

I’m confused with this, as the ‘mean’ part and the ‘leave’ part can’t be the same tense, can they? There wouldn’t be a problem to understand what it means, but I want to make it correct grammatically.

or, is that
I had meant to ring you before you left.
?
no it seems not.

will be waiting for your helpful answer :stuck_out_tongue:
Cheers!

2

Hi Penny

This sentence is correct:

  • I meant to ring you before you left.

There is no need to use the past perfect (had meant).
I suppose you could use “had meant” if you want to make sure that people understand that “meant” happened entirely before “left”.

This sentence is not correct:
- [color=red]*I meant to ring you before you leaving.

You could say this:

  • I meant to ring you before leaving.
    However, this version of the sentence has a different meaning. It means the same thing as this:
  • I meant to ring you before I left.
    .