Future perfect tense -- let’s use it!

Having goals and to-do lists help keep us on track (progressing properly). Depending on how organized you are, you could have every minute of your life planned out. I’m not that way but I think I’m pretty efficient.

We can speculate about our futures using the future perfect tense. Though used in only a few situations, it’s helpful to know. Besides, it has a simple formula: will + have + the past participle




For example:
will have seen
will have worked
will have traveled
will have known (someone)

So think about your life right now, and then think of a point in the future and your expected activity in between those two periods.

The future perfect is used when an action will be complete at a specific time in the future, but we don’t know exactly when. For this we need a future time period (often beginning with “by”).

By January 2017, Barack Obama “will have served” eight years as President of the United States.

By July 25 Lucy and Ricky “will have known” each other for 20 years.

By the end of the evening, Claudia “will have finished” the novel.

By the end of today, you “will have improved” your English.