Indirect Speech

• In indirect speech, you don’t use quotation marks or start a new line as you would for direct speech

Below we include an example of how to convert direct speech into indirect speech:

• ‘I have no idea what I'm doing!’ said Rohit.
• Rohit did not know what he was doing.
  • The second version above is an example of indirect speech. The purpose of this is to report on what was said.

• We use indirect speech for a variety of reasons:
  • Indirect speech is commonly used to describe speech that happened in the past, where you are repeating something that has been said to you before.
  • The writer may not want to interrupt the flow of text with direct speech.
  • It keeps the writer in a position of power, as what we read can be a second-hand interpretation of what was said.