When changing from direct to indirect speech, you need to change the grammar in certain ways. In this section, we are going to be looking a little more closely at direct and indirect speech and how they are used. 

Verb Tense Changes in Reported Speech

Present

If the reporting verb is in the present tense, then very little needs to be done to the direct speech sentence to change it. Heres an example.

• Direct speech: I like dogs.
• Reported speech: She says she likes dogs.

Here nothing really needed to be changed except the pronoun, because you are now talking about somebody else, so I becomes She or He. The tense is still the same because says is the present tense version of the reporting verb. But what happens if the sentence needs to be changed to past tense?

Past

Sometimes it is necessary to change the reporting verb into the past tense if what was said is no longer relevant, or was said sometime in the past. Here are the changes that would need to be made.

• Direct speech: I like dogs.
• Reported speech: She said she liked dogs.

As well as changing the pronouns here, weve had to change the tense of both the reporting verb and the verb. So, says becomes said and like becomes liked.

Direct and indirect speech

When the reporting verb is in the past tense, verb tense forms usually need to change. The tenses generally move backward in this way:

• Present Simple Tense into Past Simple Tense
• Present Continuous Tense into Past Continuous Tense
• Present Perfect Tense into Past Perfect Tense
• Past Simple Tense into Past Perfect Tense
• Past Continuous Tense into Past Perfect Continuous Tense
• Past Perfect Tense (the tense remains unchanged)

Future

If somebody is talking about what will happen in the future then, again, you will need to change the tense of the reporting verb.

• Direct speech: I shall leave in a moment.
• Reported speech: She said that she would leave in a moment.

Notice how shall and will become would here in order for it to make sense.

• Will into Would
• Will be into Would be
• Will have into Would have
• Will have been into Would have been

Modal verbs actually have a very interesting relationship with reported speech, so well look at that below too.

Modal Verbs and Reported Speech

Weve already covered modal verbs in another article, but its interesting to see how they are changed in reported speech.

• Can into Could
• Could (The verb remains unchanged)
• Have to into Had to
• Must into Must/Had to
• May into Might
• Might (The verb remains unchanged)
• Should (The verb remains unchanged)

Lets take a look at some examples.

• Direct speech: Will I see you later?
• Reported speech: He asked if he would see me later.

In the direct speech example you can see the modal verb will being used to ask a question. Notice how in reported speech the modal verb will and the reporting verb ask are both written in the past tense. So, will becomes would and ask becomes asked. Its important in reported speech to make sure that each part of the sentence is in the same tense.

Sometimes though, modal verbs do not need to change tense because they already read correctly. Heres an example.

• Direct speech: I should go to the park.
• Reported speech: He told me he should go to the park.

Notice that nothing needed to be changed here to fit the past tense reporting verb told. Should does not need to be changed grammatically for either sentence to make sense. But you will notice that because we decided to use the reporting verb told instead of said, we had to include the pronoun me for it to make sense.

• Reported speech: He told me he should go to the park.
• Reported speech: He said he should go to the park.

Both of these sentences make grammatical sense, because we added the pronoun me after told in the first sentence, but we didnt after said in the second one. Here is the incorrect versions so you can see why it doesnt work grammatically:

• Incorrect reported speech: He told he should go to the park.
• Incorrect reported speech: He said me he should go to the park.

In order to make the top one make sense, we need to add me like we did in the correct examples above. In order to make the second one make sense, we would either have to remove me like we did in the correct one above, or we would have to add another word. So that it looked like this.

• Reported speech: He said to me he should go to the park.

The above sentence makes sense, but sometimes you have to watch your wording of certain things to make sure that you arent over-speaking/writing. This can be a problem if you are trying to get your point across quickly. You should always choose the option that is quickest to say/write because it sounds/looks better and you run less risk of making a grammatical mistake.

This guide could not possibly be extensive, because there are many grammar rules that need to be followed when reporting speech, but they vary wildly. The take-home message should really be that when reporting speech, it is important to think carefully about what you are going to say or write, so you know it makes sense. Hopefully, this guide served as a good starting point though, so you can identify reported speech now, and start to think about which grammar rules are applied.