2. Indirect or Reported Speech

Indirect speech refers to repeating what another person says. When we report what someone says, we do not repeat exactly every word that was said. We normally change the tense of the words spoken as what has been said is already in the past. We also make changes to pronouns and other changes where necessary. Quotation marks are not used. By using our own words to repeat what the speaker said: EXAMPLE: He said to me, "Stop singing the same old song!" (Direct speech) He told me to stop singing the same old song. (Indirect speech) This is the Indirect or Reported Speech. We use the past tense when the main verb used by the speaker is in the past tense. Here, we do not use the quotation marks. Instead, we use an infinitive (to stop) and we repeat the pronoun (He).