The English language has two ways for conveying the spoken-words of one person to another person, as follows:

1. Direct Speech
2. Indirect Speech

For example, you are at your college where your teacher (named David) says to you “I want to meet your parents”. When you come home, you can say to your parents, about David’s wish to meet them, in the following two ways:

Here is another example. Suppose you see your friend (named John) in a market who says to you, “I have bought a book for you”. When you come home, you can say about this to your brother in the following two ways:

It can be seen that:

  In direct speech, the actual words spoken by a person (with no change in them) are conveyed to another person.

  In indirect speech, the actual words spoken by a person are slightly changed while conveying them to another person. For instance, the verb and pronouns are changed.   Direct speech: As noted earlier, the actual words uttered by a person (with no change) are quoted. Therefore, the exact words of the speaker are enclosed in inverted commas or quotation marks. In the sentence, a comma is also added after the word ‘said’ that introduces the spoken words.

Example.

  He said, “I am going to school”.

  Indirect speech: In indirect speech, the actual words of the speaker are slightly changed. This is because the actual words were spoken by the speaker in past time, but now you are speaking these words in the present time. Therefore, the verb (or tense) of the spoken words is changed. Similarly, when the speaker was speaking these words, he/she was addressing you directly but now you are addressing another person. Therefore, the pronouns of the sentence are also changed.

Example.

Note. Direct and indirect speeches are also called direct and indirect narrations.  

Before learning the rules for conversion of speech, you must learn the following two parts of the sentence.

  Reporting verb: The verb in the first part of the sentence (i.e., he said, she said, he says, she says, etc.) is called reporting verb.

Examples.

 He said, “I need your help”.
 She says, “I won a prize”.
 They said, “We saw a joker”.

  Reported speech: The second part (actual words of the speaker) of the sentence which is enclosed in inverted commas is called reported speech.

Examples.

 He said, “I need your help”.
 She says, “I won a prize”.
 They said, “We saw a joker”.

 Rule 1. The words of the speaker are not enclosed in inverted commas in indirect speech. Therefore, for converting direct speech into indirect speech the inverted commas are removed.

 Rule 2. Usage of the word 'that': The conjunction ‘that’ is always used between reporting verb and reported speech in indirect speech.

 Rule 3. Change in Tense: The tense of the reported speech is changed for converting direct speech into indirect speech. Remember, if the reporting verb (first part) of the sentence is in the past tense, then the tense of reported speech (second part) is changed for making its indirect speech. But if the reporting verb (first part) of the sentence is in the present or future tense, then the tense is not changed for converting it into indirect speech.

 Rule 4. Change in Pronoun. The pronoun (or subject) of the reported is changed according to the pronoun (or subject) of the reporting verb (first part) of the sentence. The possessive pronouns (e.g., his, her, my, their, your etc) are also sometimes changed according to the subject or object the reporting verb (first part) of the sentence.

 Rule 5. Change in Time: If time is mentioned in a sentence, the words for describing the time will be changed in indirect speech. There are specific rules for changing the time, such as that we may change today into that day, yesterday into the previous day, tomorrow into the next day, and now into then.

Note. The complete rules for change in Tense, Pronoun and Time are available on this website.