Should there be the Past Perfect? “He advised me to do as he said but I didn't pay any…” [closed]
Where is the error in the following line?
He advised me to do as he said but I didn't pay any attention to his advice.
I am confused what is the error here or even error been there or not? As far as my grammatical knowledge say that if there are two instances of the past then 'past perfect' will be used in first instance and simple past in 2nd.
You need to sort out the chronological order of events.
- He told me something (e.g. he imparted some words of wisdom).
What happened after?
- He advised me to follow his indications.
Then what happened?
- I didn't pay any attention to his advice.
Thus the original sentence could read
He advised me [2] to do as he had said [1] but I didn't pay any attention to his advice.[3]
The indications spoken by him were uttered before telling the speaker to follow the advice, which they chose to ignore anyway.
The past perfect is used to show that one event in the past happened before another event in the past. In the OP's example, the advice given [2] and the speaker's reluctance to listen [3] are both in the past, but the man's earlier utterances [1] occurred earlier, so the past perfect construction he had said is appropriate.