Language of the Day: Reported Speech

Today we’ll look at reported speech which is used when we tell someone what another person said.

Let’s start by looking at an example of direct speech and indirect speech:

  • Direct speech: “I’m sorry,” said James.

  • Indirect speech: “James apologized” or “James said he was sorry” or “James told me that he was sorry” or “James said sorry to me.”

From these examples, we can gather that direct speech repeats the exact words that the person said, at least how we remember the words, and in the indirect speech examples, the original speaker’s words are changed, including the verb tense and the verb itself in some cases.

This diagram shows common reporting verbs in addition to told and said which is combined with a preposition like to or a demonstrative pronoun like that.

And here are some examples of reported speech being used in different types of sentence structures! 🍕

Munveer D