He would walk the floor night after night.
Mistakes are often made in the use of compound tenses on account of failure to grasp the meaning of the words used.
I should have liked to have seen you,
is correct grammar but probably not correct statement of fact, as it states a past desire to have done something at a period still further remote, that is to say, "I should have liked (yesterday) to have seen you (day before yesterday)." What is generally meant is either "I should have liked to see you," that is "I (then) wished to see you," or "I should like to have seen you," that is "I (now) wish I had seen you (then)."
Every word has its own value and nearly all our mistakes arise from lack of regard for the exact value of the words to be used.
Where a participial construction is used as the object of a verb, the noun or pronoun in the object should be in the possessive case and not in the objective. You should not say, "I object to him watching me," but "I object to his watching me."
Care should be taken not to give objects to passive verbs. The very common expression "The man was given a chance" is incorrect. It should be "A chance was given to the man."
Care should also be taken to avoid the omission of the prepositions which are needed with certain verbs, for example, "beware the dog," "What happened him" should be "beware of the dog," "What happened to him."
On the other hand superfluous prepositions are sometimes used in such phrases as consider of, accept of and the like.
Such errors are to be avoided by careful study of the meaning of words and careful observation of the best written and spoken speech.