Reported speech

Reported speech

Direct and indirect speech

There are two ways to inform something: direct speech and reported speech.

• Direct speech is a representation of the actual words someone said.

• Reported speech is how we represent the speech of other people or what we ourselves say. 

Direct speech

Direct speech repeats, or quotes, the exact words spoken. When we use direct speech in writing, we place the words spoken between quotation marks (" ") and there is no change in these words. We may be reporting something that's being said NOW (for example a telephone conversation), or telling someone later about a previous conversation.

Examples

• She says, "What time will you be home?"

• She said, "What time will you be home?" and I said, "I don't know! "

• "There's a fly in my soup!" screamed Simone.

• John said, "There's an elephant outside the window."