Learn Spanish (Latin America): Él había escrito el monólogo con sarcasmo y se lo entregó al comediante. - He had written the stand-up routine with sarcasm and handed it to the comedian.

Él había escrito el monólogo con sarcasmo y se lo entregó al comediante.

He had written the stand-up routine with sarcasm and handed it to the comedian.

Breakdown of Él había escrito el monólogo con sarcasmo y se lo entregó al comediante.

Questions & Answers about Él había escrito el monólogo con sarcasmo y se lo entregó al comediante.

Why use había escrito for the writing but entregó for handing it over?

This sentence uses the past perfect (había escrito, meaning "had written") to show an action that was completely finished before another action in the past happened. The second, more recent past action is the handing over, so it uses the standard preterite tense (entregó).

Why is it se lo entregó instead of le lo entregó?

When an indirect object pronoun (like le for "to him") and a direct object pronoun (like lo for "it") are used right next to each other, Spanish changes the le to se to avoid the clunky "le lo" sound. Here, se means "to him" and lo refers to the routine.

If se already means "to him", why do we need al comediante at the end of the sentence?

Because se is ambiguous and can mean "to him", "to her", or "to them", adding al comediante clarifies exactly who received the routine. Even when the recipient is explicitly named like this, Spanish grammar still requires the indirect object pronoun to be included earlier in the sentence.

Is monólogo the usual word for a stand-up comedy routine?