Reported Speech, Voice and Determiners

When you repeat what somebody said, you can do it in two ways. In direct speech you keep the speaker’s exact words and put them inside quotation marks: Meera said, “I am reading a novel.” In indirect speech — also called reported speech — you fold those words into your own sentence, and the quotation marks disappear: Meera said that she was reading a novel. Both sentences carry the same news. Only the packing is different.

Every sentence of this kind has two halves. The reporting clause names the speaker and the act of speaking: Meera said, the teacher asked, my father warned me. The reported clause is what was actually spoken. In direct speech a comma separates the two and the spoken part sits inside quotation marks. In indirect speech both the comma and the quotation marks go, and a joining word takes their place — that for statements, if or whether for yes-no questions, the wh-word itself for wh-questions, and to plus a verb for orders and requests.

Most errors happen because students try to change everything at the same time. Work through the sentence in a fixed order instead, and the answer almost builds itself:

1. Look at the reporting verb first. If it is in the past (said, told, asked, replied), the verbs inside the quotation will move one step back in time. If it is in the present or the future (says, tells, will say), nothing inside changes at all.
2. Remove the comma and the quotation marks, and put in the correct joining word.
3. Fix the pronouns, so a reader who was not there still knows who is who.
4. Apply the backshift to the verb of the reported clause.
5. Change the words that point to time and place — now, today, tomorrow, here, this and so on.

Pronouns follow a neat pattern. The first person inside the quotation (I, we, me, us, my, our) changes to match the subject of the reporting verb. The second person (you, your, yours) changes to match the object of the reporting verb, that is, the person being spoken to. The third person (he, she, it, they) does not change at all. So Rohit said to Anu, “I will help you with my notes.” becomes Rohit told Anu that he would help her with his notes. Here I follows Rohit, you follows Anu, and my follows Rohit again.

Two small points of punctuation cost marks more often than the grammar itself does. First, indirect speech never keeps the question mark or the exclamation mark. The whole sentence ends with a full stop, because you are now making a statement about a question, not asking one. Second, said to becomes told the moment a listener is named, and told must be followed by that listener: He told me that he was ill is correct, while He told that he was ill is not. If no listener is named, keep said: He said that he was ill.

Backshift simply means moving the verb one step further into the past, because the speaking happened earlier than your reporting of it. Learn the ladder once and you can climb down it for any sentence. When the reporting verb is in the past tense, the verb inside the quotation changes like this:

• Simple present becomes simple past: “I write” → he wrote
• Present continuous becomes past continuous: “I am writing” → he was writing
• Present perfect becomes past perfect: “I have written” → he had written
• Present perfect continuous becomes past perfect continuous: “I have been writing” → he had been writing
• Simple past becomes past perfect: “I wrote” → he had written
• Past continuous becomes past perfect continuous: “I was writing” → he had been writing
• Past perfect stays past perfect: “I had written” → he had written

Notice that the ladder has a floor. Once a verb reaches the past perfect it cannot go any further back, so it simply stays where it is. That is why two different direct sentences, I wrote and I had written, can end up looking identical after reporting.

Modal verbs have their own short list. Will becomes would; shall becomes would when it points to the future and should when it asks for advice or an opinion; can becomes could; may becomes might; must either stays as must or becomes had to when it expresses an obligation. The modals that are already past in form — would, could, might, should, ought to, used to, had better, need not — do not change at all. So “You should rest,” she said to me. becomes She told me that I should rest, with the modal untouched.

The second set of changes deals with words that anchor the sentence to a particular moment or place. Once you are reporting later, and probably somewhere else, those anchors have to move:

• now → then; just now → at that moment
• today → that day; tonight → that night
• tomorrow → the next day or the following day
• yesterday → the previous day or the day before
• last week → the previous week; next month → the following month
• ago → before; here → there; this → that; these → those; come → go

Now put the whole machine together on one sentence. My uncle said, “I bought this camera here yesterday.” Step one: the reporting verb said is past, so backshift applies. Step two: add that. Step three: I follows the subject, so it becomes he. Step four: bought is simple past, so it climbs down to had bought. Step five: this becomes that, here becomes there, yesterday becomes the previous day. Final answer: My uncle said that he had bought that camera there the previous day.

There are sensible exceptions. If the reporting verb is in the present or future, keep everything as it is: He says that he is busy. If the reported words state a universal truth or a permanent fact, school grammar keeps them in the present tense: The teacher said that the earth revolves round the sun. The same applies to a habit that is still true and to a time expression that has not yet passed — if you are reporting on the very same day, today can honestly stay today.

Questions, orders and exclamations each need a different joining word and a different reporting verb, but the backshift and pronoun rules from statements still apply unchanged. Deal with the shape of the sentence first, then run the same five steps.

Wh-questions. Change the reporting verb to asked, enquired of or wanted to know. The wh-word itself becomes the joining word, so you do not add that. Three things must go: the question mark, the inverted word order, and the helping verbs do, does and did. The reported clause has to read like a statement. The stranger said to me, “Where does the headmaster live?” becomes The stranger asked me where the headmaster lived. The does vanishes and its past tense is absorbed into lived. Writing where did the headmaster live or where the headmaster lives is the classic slip.

Yes-no questions. These have no wh-word, so English supplies one: use if or whether. The two are interchangeable here, though whether is preferred when alternatives are offered. Mother said to me, “Have you finished your homework?” becomes Mother asked me if I had finished my homework. Again there is no inversion and no question mark. If the answer is reported too, use the phrases replied in the affirmative and replied in the negative, or simply report the sense: He replied that he had not finished it.

Commands, requests and advice. These lose their joining word entirely and take a to-infinitive instead. Choose the reporting verb by tone: ordered or commanded for a sharp instruction, told for a plain one, requested or begged when the speaker says please, advised when it is guidance, warned when there is danger, reminded when it is a nudge. Because these verbs need a listener, name one even if the direct sentence only implies it. “Shut the gate,” the watchman said to the boy. becomes The watchman ordered the boy to shut the gate. A negative command takes not to before the verb: “Do not touch the wire,” he said to us. becomes He warned us not to touch the wire. The word please is not reported; it is replaced by the verb requested.

Suggestions with let us. When the speaker includes himself, report it with suggested or proposed: “Let us plant a sapling,” said Ravi. becomes Ravi suggested that they should plant a sapling. But let used as permission behaves like an ordinary request: “Let me go, please,” the child said becomes The child requested that he might be allowed to go.

Exclamations and wishes. Use exclaimed with a phrase that names the feeling — with joy, with sorrow, with regret, with surprise — and turn the exclamation into a plain statement joined by that. Words like what a and how are usually replaced by very or great. She said, “What a beautiful sunset!” becomes She exclaimed with delight that it was a very beautiful sunset. Greetings and set phrases have their own verbs: wished for good morning, thanked for thank you, bade farewell for goodbye, prayed or wished for may you succeed.

When a dialogue has several turns, report each turn with its own reporting verb and link them with and, then or a new sentence. Vary the verbs — asked, replied, added, explained, agreed — so that the report reads like an account of a conversation rather than a list.

Voice tells you where the sentence puts its attention. In the active voice the subject does the action: The gardener waters the plants. In the passive voice the subject receives the action: The plants are watered by the gardener. Nothing about the event has changed; only the spotlight has moved from the doer to the thing done.

The conversion is a three-step swap, and it is worth writing the steps out until they become automatic:

1. Take the object of the active sentence and make it the subject of the passive one. If it is a pronoun, change its form: me becomes I, him becomes he, them becomes they.
2. Change the verb to the matching form of be plus the past participle (the third form of the verb). The tense of be must be the same as the tense of the original verb — this is the step that is easiest to get wrong.
3. Take the old subject, put by in front of it, and move it to the end. Change its pronoun form too: I becomes me, he becomes him, we becomes us.

Here is the auxiliary for each tense, with write as the model. Simple present takes is / am / are written. Present continuous takes is / am / are being written. Present perfect takes has / have been written. Simple past takes was / were written. Past continuous takes was / were being written. Past perfect takes had been written. Simple future takes will be written. Future perfect takes will have been written. Modals take can be, may be, must be, should be, could have been and so on, always with the plain be followed by the third form.

Four tenses have no natural passive form: present perfect continuous, past perfect continuous, future continuous and future perfect continuous. Nobody writes The letter has been being written. If a sentence in one of those tenses turns up, keep it active or rephrase it.

Questions. Convert the statement first, then put the question back together. Did he write the letter? is really He wrote the letter, which becomes The letter was written by him, and as a question, Was the letter written by him? A wh-question keeps its wh-word in front: Who broke the window? becomes By whom was the window broken? and What do you want? becomes What is wanted by you?

Imperatives. An order has no visible subject, so the passive uses Let: Open the door. becomes Let the door be opened. A negative order becomes Let the switch not be touched. or, more naturally, The switch must not be touched. A polite request becomes You are requested to help the old man.

Verbs with two objects. Verbs such as give, offer, send, teach, tell, show, lend, pay, promise take both a person and a thing, so they allow two passives. The principal gave Anita a certificate. can become Anita was given a certificate by the principal. or A certificate was given to Anita by the principal. Notice the small word to that appears in the second version; leaving it out is a common slip.

Finally, the agent is often dropped. If the doer is unknown, obvious or unimportant, by and everything after it simply goes: Somebody has stolen my bicycle becomes My bicycle has been stolen, and They speak Tamil in that district becomes Tamil is spoken in that district. A useful special pattern is the impersonal passive: People say that he is honest becomes It is said that he is honest or He is said to be honest.

Knowing how to build a passive is only half the skill. The other half is knowing when it earns its place, because an unnecessary passive makes writing long, cold and hard to follow. A clear sentence always reads better than a complicated one.

Reach for the passive in these situations. First, when the doer is unknown: My cycle was stolen from outside the library is the only honest way to say it, because you do not know who took it. Second, when the doer is obvious or unimportant: The results will be announced on Monday needs no by the examination board, because everyone knows who announces results. Third, when you want to keep the focus on the receiver: Ravi was awarded the first prize keeps Ravi at the front of the sentence, where the news actually is.

Fourth, and this is the use science and lab work depends on, the passive is right for describing a process, because the steps matter and the person doing them does not: The mixture was heated for ten minutes, then the residue was filtered and weighed. Fifth, notices and rules use the passive to sound impersonal and to address everyone at once: Students are requested to switch off their mobile phones. Sixth, the passive lets you report a problem without pointing a finger: An error has been made in the seating plan is kinder than naming the person who made it.

There is also a quiet reason that good writers use without thinking about it. English likes to begin a sentence with information the reader already has and end it with what is new. If the previous sentence was about a bridge, then The bridge was built in 1932 flows better than The British engineers built the bridge in 1932, simply because it starts where the reader already is.

Now the other side. Prefer the active voice when you know the doer and the doer matters, when you are telling a story, when you are giving instructions, and whenever the passive would only add words. The committee rejected the proposal is shorter, clearer and more honest than The proposal was rejected by the committee. A paragraph in which every sentence is passive quickly becomes tiring to read.

One limit is absolute. Only a transitive verb — one that takes an object — can be made passive. Verbs like sleep, arrive, die, laugh, happen, come, go, sit have no object, so there is nothing to promote to subject, and no passive exists. A few transitive verbs also refuse the passive because they describe a state rather than an action: have in the sense of possess, and verbs like resemble, suit, fit, lack, become. You cannot turn This shirt suits you into a passive, and you should not try.

A determiner is a word that comes before a noun and settles a basic question about it: which one, whose, how many, how much. Adjectives describe a noun; determiners point at it or measure it. In those three tall boys, those and three are determiners and tall is an adjective. The main families are articles, demonstratives, possessives, quantifiers, numerals and question words such as which, what and whose.

Articles. Use a or an before a singular countable noun that the listener is meeting for the first time or that is one of a kind rather than a particular one. The choice between them depends on the sound that follows, never on the letter. Because the h is silent, we write an hour, an honest officer and an heir. Because u here is pronounced like yoo, we write a university, a useful book, a European country and a one-rupee coin. Letters read aloud follow the same test: an M.A., an S.P., an X-ray, but a B.Ed. and a CBSE circular.

Use the when the noun is already known to the listener — because it was mentioned before, because there is only one of it, or because the sentence itself makes it specific. So: the second mention (I bought a pen; the pen leaks), unique things (the sun, the sky), superlatives and ordinals (the tallest, the first), rivers, seas, deserts, mountain ranges and groups of islands (the Ganga, the Bay of Bengal, the Thar Desert, the Himalayas), newspapers and holy books, musical instruments (play the tabla), an adjective standing for a whole class (the poor, the young), and names built with of (the Republic of India).

Use no article at all before proper nouns (Kerala, Rahul), before plural or uncountable nouns used in a general sense (Honesty is the best policy, Cows give milk), before meals (after lunch), languages and school subjects (She teaches Hindi, He likes Mathematics), games (play cricket), means of travel (by bus, on foot), and single mountains and lakes (Mount Everest, Dal Lake).

Demonstratives and possessives. This and these point to what is near; that and those to what is far, in space or in time. My, your, his, her, its, our, their answer the question whose. Both families are central determiners, and English allows only one central determiner per noun. So the my book and a my friend are wrong; say my book and a friend of mine, or this book of yours.

Quantifiers. The countable and uncountable split decides most of these. Use many, few, a few, several, both, a number of with plural countable nouns (many books, a few boys). Use each, every, either, neither with a singular countable noun (each boy, every student) — the plural appears only after of, as in each of the boys. Use much, little, a little, a great deal of, a large amount of with uncountable nouns. Some, any, all, most, enough, no, a lot of, plenty of work with either. The pairs that need the most care are few and a few, little and a little. Without the article the meaning is negative and means hardly any: There is little milk in the jug, so we cannot make tea. With the article it is positive and means some, though not much: There is a little milk left, so we can make one cup. Adding the gives a third sense, all that there is: The little milk we had was used up.

Some, any, each, every, either, neither. Use some in positive statements and in offers and requests (Would you like some tea?); use any in negatives and open questions (I do not have any change). Each looks at members one by one and can be used of two or more; every needs three or more and makes a general statement. Both take a singular verb: Each of the boys was present. Either means one of two and neither means not one of two, and both also take a singular verb: Neither of the two answers is correct. Use both for two and all for more than two.

Finally, determiners come in a fixed order when more than one appears: predeterminer, then central determiner, then postdeterminer. That gives all the three girls, both my hands, half the class, such a long journey — never the all three girls.

Grammar items in an English paper come in a few standard shapes, and each shape has its own way of being read carefully. Knowing the shape saves you from answering a question that was not asked.

The plainest shape is a straight instruction: change into indirect speech, or rewrite in the passive voice. Here you write the whole new sentence, and every part of it must be right — tense, pronoun, joining word, punctuation. A second shape gives you a sentence with a blank and asks you to complete only the missing part, often a reported clause: Ridhima told Karan that ______ . Read the direct sentence, do the full transformation in your head, and then write only the words that fill the blank, without repeating what is already printed. A third shape is editing or omission, where a short passage contains one determiner or auxiliary error per line and you copy out the incorrect word beside the correct one. A fourth shape is dialogue completion, where a short conversation must be turned into a connected report.

Keep a short checklist for reported speech and run it every time. Does the joining word suit the sentence type — that, if or whether, a wh-word, or to plus a verb? Has every verb moved one step back, unless the reporting verb is present or the statement is a permanent truth? Do the pronouns follow the subject and object of the reporting verb? Have do, does and did disappeared from reported questions, and has the word order become that of a statement? Is the question mark gone? Does told have a listener after it?

For voice, the checklist is shorter. Have you kept the tense of the original? Is the verb in its third form and not its past tense — written, not wrote? Has the pronoun changed case on both sides? Is the agent worth keeping, or should by and its noun be dropped? For an imperative, have you used Let?

For determiners, test articles by sound and not by spelling, decide countable or uncountable before choosing between much and many or little and few, remember that each, every, either and neither take a singular verb, and never place two central determiners side by side. Finally, write the full sentence neatly rather than scribbling only the changed word, because an answer that cannot be read cannot be given credit.