Reported Speech in English Grammar

In English grammar, we use reported speech to convey the words of another person - let's learn how to do it grammatically correct.

When we use direct speech - a speaker's exact words with quotation marks - we can also use indirect speech. The latter case implies that we change the tense and pronouns to indicate that some time has passed.

Rule 1: When turning direct speech into indirect speech, we need to pay attention to changing the pronouns, information about the time and place, and the tense.

Note: Typical changes of time and place include:

Rule 2: We have to set back the tense by one degree if the introductory clause is in the simple past (e.g. she said). The term for this in English is backshift.

Here is an overview of changing the tenses in English grammar:

Note: The verbs could, should, would, might, must, needn’t, ought to, used to normally do not change.

Rule 3: We don't change the tense if the introductory clause is in the simple present (e.g. she says), as it already indicates that the statement is being immediately repeated.

Rule 4: When turning questions into indirect speech, we have to change the pronouns, the time and place information, and set the tense back (backshift). In addition, we use a question word instead of that. If there is no question word, we use whether/if instead.

Rule 5: When turning demands and requests into indirect speech, we only need to change the pronouns and the time and place information. When it comes to the tenses – we simply use an infinitive.