Grammar: Sentence: Quoting and reporting speech and thoughts

Reporting speech and thoughts

Tense in indirect speech

The choice of tense in indirect speech is quite complex, and depends primarily on whether the verb is in the reporting clause or the reported clause, and whether the tense should be the same for both clauses or not. There are no simple rules for 'changing' direct speech into indirect speech.  

Tense in reporting clause

The reporting verb in an indirect speech structure (say, speak, tell, ask, explain, complain) is usually in the past tense form since indirect speech is typically used to report what people said, wrote or thought at some point in the past: 

MegaMonster complained  that the water was polluted.

Kitty thought  she had failed her test.

Although all tenses are possible for the reporting verb, we commonly use the past simple or present simple. Note that the present simple is usually only used in certain situations:

	to report a general statement
		Most people believe // that smoking is bad for your health.
	to report something that people say habitually
		Hong Kong people always say // that you shouldn't drink tap water.
	to report something that has current relevance
		The black rain signal tells us // that we can expect floods and landslides today.

	to report the content of a book, novel, film, play, academic study, etc
		Ricky's old geography book shows // that Hong Kong once belonged to Britain.

Tense in reported clause

The tense of the reported clause is generally one step further in the past than the reporting clause. For example, if the reporting clause is in the simple past tense, the reported clause will usually be in the past perfect tense, as in the example above: Kitty thought that she had failed her test. However, it could just as easily stay in the same tense:

MegaMonster   said                     simple past that the water from the pool   tasted  sweet.                                           simple past

The reasons for a particular choice of tense are found in the context of the reporting clause, and are often not easily discerned. 

In principle the same shift to a greater past occurs when the verb in the report clause expresses modality instead of tense. For example, if the MischiefMaker had said to MegaMonster "The water from the pool will taste sweet", then a report of this is likely to move the modal auxiliary verb to its 'past' form:

The MischiefMaker   said  // that the water from the pool  would  be sweet.                              past tense                                                       'past' modal

Here is a summary of the relationship between the tenses in the reporting clause and those in the report clause:  

For information about some of the misconceptions that people often have about tense in indirect speech, click here.