‘I will love you forever,’ he wrote, and then posted the note through Alice’s door. In a similar way, we can report what people wrote or thought:
Indirect speech focuses more on the content of what someone said rather than their exact words:
In this example, I becomes she and the verb tense reflects the fact that time has passed since the words were spoken: didn’t realise becomes hadn’t realised. In indirect speech, the original speaker’s words are changed.īarbara said she hadn’t realised it was midnight. There are two main types of reported speech: direct speech and indirect speech.ĭirect speech repeats the exact words the person used, or how we remember their words:īarbara said, “I didn’t realise it was midnight.” Reported speech is how we represent the speech of other people or what we ourselves say.
