2.1.13

Indirect Speech

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Indirect Speech

Indirect speech is when you write what a person has said, but do not use the exact spoken words.

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Punctuation

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

  • 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.

Jump to other topics

1Spelling

2Punctuation

3Grammar

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