reported speech academic writing

4.3 GRAMMAR: Reported Speech

There are two basic ways: direct speech and indirect speech. Direct speech is an exact account of what someone said or wrote. To include direct speech in your writing, enclose the words in “quotation marks.” Indirect speech is a restatement of what someone said or wrote. Indirect speech does not use the person’s exact words. You do not need to use quotation marks for indirect quotations.

Direct speech (quoting)

One way to report what a person said or wrote is to repeat their exact words. This is called direct speech. The person’s words are called a quotation.

To use direct speech, you must repeat the person’s words exactly. You use a verb of attribution and specific punctuation. Quotation marks show readers another person’s exact words. Often, you will want to identify who is speaking. You can do this at the beginning, middle, or end of the quote. Notice the use of commas and capitalized words.

Look at these examples:

• “I’m no prophet. My job is making windows where there were once walls,” said philosopher Michel Foucault.
• Michel Foucault said, “I’m no prophet. My job is making windows where there were once walls.”
• “I’m no prophet,” said philosopher Michel Foucault. “My job is making windows where there were once walls.”

They all mean exactly the same thing. The difference between these three options is merely a matter of style. What is important, however, is the punctuation. Pay attention to quotation marks, commas, periods, and spaces.

Use single quotation marks to enclose a quote within a quote. For example: “He said, ‘The futurist told me to buy stock in plastics.'”

• A quotation must be exactly the same as the original text.
• A quotation must use “quotation marks” surrounding the exact text.
• A quotation must give credit to the original author or speaker.
• According to  Sports Illustrated , “Eliminating drug use from Olympic Sports would be no small challenge.”
• “ Eliminating drug use from Olympic Sports would be no small challenge,” according to  Sports Illustrated .

Indirect speech (paraphrasing)

Another way to report what a person says is indirect speech. Here, you don’t need to use the other person’s exact words. In informal situations, you may change only a word or two (such as the verb tense). Other times, such as in formal academic research writing, you paraphrase, or say the same thing using different words or a different word order. When you paraphrase, you usually use a verb of attribution followed by a noun clause, often introduced by the relative pronoun  that . Here’s how you can paraphrase the example from above:

• Philosopher Michel Foucault says he doesn’t see the future, but instead helps people find ways to put windows in walls.
• Michel Foucault says he’s not a philosopher; rather, he helps people see beyond what is immediately in front of them.

The 4 Rs of paraphrasing

According to the Virtual Library, here are four steps to paraphrase:

• Reword  the text by using synonyms or different parts of speech; change verb tense or change active verbs to passive and vice versa.
• Rearrange  by moving words to make new sentences or reorganize the sentences in a passage.
• Realize  that not all words or phrases can be changed; you won’t be able to replace names, dates, titles, or technical words.
• Recheck  your work to make sure it carries the same meaning as the original; a paraphrase does not add or omit any information, and it does not include your personal opinion.

NOTE: In formal academic writing, we often use a reporting verb in the present simple tense. Example:  The author of this book suggests that the real reason for the wildfires was human carelessness.

Let’s look at another example:

Using quotation :  Many people believe they can get more done if they do several things at the same time. However, Steven Pinker disagrees. In his article “Mind Over Mass Media” in  The New York Times (2010), Pinker says, “Genuine multitasking, too, has been exposed as a myth, not just by laboratory studies but by the familiar sight of an S.U.V. undulating between lanes as the driver cuts deals on his cellphone” (A31). Pinker goes on to explain that there are better ways to be more effective and efficient …

Using paraphrase :  Many people believe they can get more done if they do several things at the same time. However, Steven Pinker disagrees. Pinker (2010) writes that people cannot really do more than one thing at a time; one can see this from scientific research projects and also from just watching a car moving unpredictably down the highway while the driver is talking on a cell phone (A31). Pinker goes on to explain that there are better ways to be more effective and efficient …

Note the three steps we took in making this paraphrase:

• We defined the key term. (“Genuine multitasking” = “do more than one thing at a time”)
• We used different vocabulary. (“laboratory studies” = “scientific research projects”; “an S.U.V. undulating between lanes” = “a car moving unpredictably down the highway”)
• We used different grammar. (“has been exposed” = “one can see”; “by the familiar sight” = “from just watching”)
• A paraphrase has the same meaning (all main ideas included; no new ideas added).
• A paraphrase is different enough to be considered your own words (uses no more than a few words in a row from the original source; changes vocabulary and grammar as much as possible)
• A paraphrase refers to (cites) the original source.

Use the following exercise to check your understanding. This exercise is for practice; it is not graded, and you may complete it as many times as you wish.

1.  Which of the options below describes this sentence best? The artist said the studio smelled like “paint and possibility.”

• The sentence uses a quotation to explain what the artist said.
• There is no paraphrase (because there are “quotation marks”), but there is also no direct speech because the quote is not a full sentence.
• The sentence uses a quotation, but the whole sentence is incomplete and therefore only a fragment.
• The sentence paraphrases what the artist said.

2. Paraphrasing, which is also called “indirect speech,” uses the exact same words as the original source.

3. Here is a sentence from an article by Mary Lynch:  The value of education is more than knowledge. How would I report this as indirect speech (paraphrase)?

• The value of education is more than knowledge, believes Mary Lynch.
• In Mary Lynch’s opinion, “The value of education is more than knowledge.”
• Mary Lynch suggests that knowledge is not the only important thing about learning.
• Mary Lynch says education and training are very important.

4. Here is a sentence from an article by Doug Drial: Oregon became a state on February 14, 1859. How would I report this as direct speech (quotation)?

• Doug Drial writes Oregon as a state in 1859.
• According to Doug Drial, February 14, 1859 was the date when Oregon became a state.
• Doug Drial says Oregon became a state on February 14, 1859.
• Doug Drial says, “Oregon became a state on February 14, 1859.”

5. In formal academic writing, we should …

• use a variety of both direct and indirect speech
• use only direct speech
• always use only my own ideas and never support from outside sources
• use only indirect speech

6. Which of the following are ways to help you paraphrase? (choose all that apply)

• change only the punctuation
• change the word forms
• change the word order
• use the other person’s exact words
• use synonyms
• use quotation marks
• change the verb tense
• use a metaphor or simile

7. In formal academic writing, you usually use the __________________ tense to report what others have said or written.

• present perfect
• simple future
• simple present
• simple past

8. A comma or period usually goes outside (after) the quotation mark.

9. Which of the following uses correct grammar?

• My teacher said me to cite my outside sources of information.
• My teacher told me to cite my outside sources of information.
• My teacher says me to cite my outside sources of information.
• My teacher tells to cite my outside sources of information.

10.  A quotation, which is also called “direct speech,” must use the speaker’s or writer’s exact words.

Some text has been adapted from “Quotation Marks | English 112: Exposition and Persuasion.” Courses.lumenlearning.com, courses.lumenlearning.com/ivytech-engl112/chapter/quotation-marks/ . Accessed 29 Dec. 2021.

Synthesis Copyright © 2022 by Timothy Krause is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Direct Speech and Reported Speech

There are two ways to report what someone says or thinks:

Direct Speech

Direct speech shows a person's exact words. Quotation marks ("....") are a sign that the words are the exact words that a person used.

Hai asked, "Where are you going?"

Manny replied, "I'm going home."

Reported Speech

Reported speech puts the speaker's words or ideas into a sentence without quotation marks. Noun clauses are usually used. In reported speech, the reader does not assume that the words are the speaker's exact words; often, they are a paraphrase of the speaker's words.

Hai asked Manny where he was going.

Manny said he was going home.

Note: Use of the word "that" is optional in reported speech. Both of the following sentences are correct:

• The child said that they were lost.
• The child said they were lost.

Verb Tense in Reported Speech

When you report what someone said in the past, you usually shift back a verb tense from the tense the speaker used. These are some examples of verb shifts:

• simple present to simple past
• past to past perfect
• present perfect to past perfect

*If the reported information is still true, you may use the same tense.

Questions in Reported Speech

Word order: The word order in a reported question is the same as in a statement. The subject comes before the verb.

• Question: Are you ready?
• Statement: I am ready.
• Question in reported speech: She wanted to know if I was ready.

Punctuation: If the sentence is a statement, end it with a period even if it contains a reported question.

• Statement containing a reported question: She asked me what I thought of the book.
• Question containing a reported question: Did she ask what you thought of the book?

Yes or No Questions

To change a yes/no question to a noun clause in reported speech, introduce the noun clause "if" or "whether." "Whether or not" may also be used.

Information Questions

To change an information question to a noun clause in reported speech, begin the noun clause with the question word and remember to use sentence word order.

The person who is reporting what someone said is usually different from the person who made the original statement. As a result, pronouns in reported speech often change.

Place and Time

Changes in the situation between direct and reported speech can result in changes to words indicating place and time.

Recommend and Suggest

The subjunctive, or base, form of the verb (no tense, without "to") is used in reported speech when the main verb is "recommend" or "suggest."

Infinitives

Infinitives (to + the simple form of the verb) may sometimes be used instead of noun clauses, especially in commands and in requests for action or permission.

Commands can be reported two ways:

• A noun clause with a modal (usually "should")
• An infinitive

Requests for Action or Permission

Requests for action or permission can be reported two ways:

• A noun clause with "if"

What is Reported Speech and how to use it? with Examples

Published by

Olivia Drake

Reported speech and indirect speech are two terms that refer to the same concept, which is the act of expressing what someone else has said.

On this page:

Reported speech is different from direct speech because it does not use the speaker’s exact words. Instead, the reporting verb is used to introduce the reported speech, and the tense and pronouns are changed to reflect the shift in perspective. There are two main types of reported speech: statements and questions.

1. Reported Statements: In reported statements, the reporting verb is usually “said.” The tense in the reported speech changes from the present simple to the past simple, and any pronouns referring to the speaker or listener are changed to reflect the shift in perspective. For example, “I am going to the store,” becomes “He said that he was going to the store.”

2. Reported Questions: In reported questions, the reporting verb is usually “asked.” The tense in the reported speech changes from the present simple to the past simple, and the word order changes from a question to a statement. For example, “What time is it?” becomes “She asked what time it was.”

It’s important to note that the tense shift in reported speech depends on the context and the time of the reported speech. Here are a few more examples:

• Direct speech: “I will call you later.”Reported speech: He said that he would call me later.
• Direct speech: “Did you finish your homework?”Reported speech: She asked if I had finished my homework.
• Direct speech: “I love pizza.”Reported speech: They said that they loved pizza.

When do we use reported speech?

Reported speech is used to report what someone else has said, thought, or written. It is often used in situations where you want to relate what someone else has said without quoting them directly.

Reported speech can be used in a variety of contexts, such as in news reports, academic writing, and everyday conversation. Some common situations where reported speech is used include:

News reports:  Journalists often use reported speech to quote what someone said in an interview or press conference.

Business and professional communication:  In professional settings, reported speech can be used to summarize what was discussed in a meeting or to report feedback from a customer.

Conversational English:  In everyday conversations, reported speech is used to relate what someone else said. For example, “She told me that she was running late.”

Narration:  In written narratives or storytelling, reported speech can be used to convey what a character said or thought.

How to make reported speech?

1. Change the pronouns and adverbs of time and place: In reported speech, you need to change the pronouns, adverbs of time and place to reflect the new speaker or point of view. Here’s an example:

Direct speech: “I’m going to the store now,” she said. Reported speech: She said she was going to the store then.

In this example, the pronoun “I” is changed to “she” and the adverb “now” is changed to “then.”

2. Change the tense: In reported speech, you usually need to change the tense of the verb to reflect the change from direct to indirect speech. Here’s an example:

Direct speech: “I will meet you at the park tomorrow,” he said. Reported speech: He said he would meet me at the park the next day.

In this example, the present tense “will” is changed to the past tense “would.”

3. Change reporting verbs: In reported speech, you can use different reporting verbs such as “say,” “tell,” “ask,” or “inquire” depending on the context of the speech. Here’s an example:

Direct speech: “Did you finish your homework?” she asked. Reported speech: She asked if I had finished my homework.

In this example, the reporting verb “asked” is changed to “said” and “did” is changed to “had.”

Overall, when making reported speech, it’s important to pay attention to the verb tense and the changes in pronouns, adverbs, and reporting verbs to convey the original speaker’s message accurately.

How do I change the pronouns and adverbs in reported speech?

1. Changing Pronouns: In reported speech, the pronouns in the original statement must be changed to reflect the perspective of the new speaker. Generally, the first person pronouns (I, me, my, mine, we, us, our, ours) are changed according to the subject of the reporting verb, while the second and third person pronouns (you, your, yours, he, him, his, she, her, hers, it, its, they, them, their, theirs) are changed according to the object of the reporting verb. For example:

Direct speech: “I love chocolate.” Reported speech: She said she loved chocolate.

Direct speech: “You should study harder.” Reported speech: He advised me to study harder.

Direct speech: “She is reading a book.” Reported speech: They noticed that she was reading a book.

2. Changing Adverbs: In reported speech, the adverbs and adverbial phrases that indicate time or place may need to be changed to reflect the perspective of the new speaker. For example:

Direct speech: “I’m going to the cinema tonight.” Reported speech: She said she was going to the cinema that night.

Direct speech: “He is here.” Reported speech: She said he was there.

Note that the adverb “now” usually changes to “then” or is omitted altogether in reported speech, depending on the context.

It’s important to keep in mind that the changes made to pronouns and adverbs in reported speech depend on the context and the perspective of the new speaker. With practice, you can become more comfortable with making these changes in reported speech.

How do I change the tense in reported speech?

In reported speech, the tense of the reported verb usually changes to reflect the change from direct to indirect speech. Here are some guidelines on how to change the tense in reported speech:

Present simple in direct speech changes to past simple in reported speech. For example: Direct speech: “I like pizza.” Reported speech: She said she liked pizza.

Present continuous in direct speech changes to past continuous in reported speech. For example: Direct speech: “I am studying for my exam.” Reported speech: He said he was studying for his exam.

Present perfect in direct speech changes to past perfect in reported speech. For example: Direct speech: “I have finished my work.” Reported speech: She said she had finished her work.

Past simple in direct speech changes to past perfect in reported speech. For example: Direct speech: “I visited my grandparents last weekend.” Reported speech: She said she had visited her grandparents the previous weekend.

Will in direct speech changes to would in reported speech. For example: Direct speech: “I will help you with your project.” Reported speech: He said he would help me with my project.

Can in direct speech changes to could in reported speech. For example: Direct speech: “I can speak French.” Reported speech: She said she could speak French.

Remember that the tense changes in reported speech depend on the tense of the verb in the direct speech, and the tense you use in reported speech should match the time frame of the new speaker’s perspective. With practice, you can become more comfortable with changing the tense in reported speech.

Do I always need to use a reporting verb in reported speech?

No, you do not always need to use a reporting verb in reported speech. However, using a reporting verb can help to clarify who is speaking and add more context to the reported speech.

In some cases, the reported speech can be introduced by phrases such as “I heard that” or “It seems that” without using a reporting verb. For example:

Direct speech: “I’m going to the cinema tonight.” Reported speech with a reporting verb: She said she was going to the cinema tonight. Reported speech without a reporting verb: It seems that she’s going to the cinema tonight.

However, it’s important to note that using a reporting verb can help to make the reported speech more formal and accurate. When using reported speech in academic writing or journalism, it’s generally recommended to use a reporting verb to make the reporting more clear and credible.

Some common reporting verbs include say, tell, explain, ask, suggest, and advise. For example:

Direct speech: “I think we should invest in renewable energy.” Reported speech with a reporting verb: She suggested that they invest in renewable energy.

Overall, while using a reporting verb is not always required, it can be helpful to make the reported speech more clear and accurate

How to use reported speech to report questions and commands?

1. Reporting Questions: When reporting questions, you need to use an introductory phrase such as “asked” or “wondered” followed by the question word (if applicable), subject, and verb. You also need to change the word order to make it a statement. Here’s an example:

Direct speech: “What time is the meeting?” Reported speech: She asked what time the meeting was.

Note that the question mark is not used in reported speech.

2. Reporting Commands: When reporting commands, you need to use an introductory phrase such as “ordered” or “told” followed by the person, to + infinitive, and any additional information. Here’s an example:

Direct speech: “Clean your room!” Reported speech: She ordered me to clean my room.

Note that the exclamation mark is not used in reported speech.

In both cases, the tense of the reported verb should be changed accordingly. For example, present simple changes to past simple, and future changes to conditional. Here are some examples:

Direct speech: “Will you go to the party with me?”Reported speech: She asked if I would go to the party with her. Direct speech: “Please bring me a glass of water.”Reported speech: She requested that I bring her a glass of water.

Remember that when using reported speech to report questions and commands, the introductory phrases and verb tenses are important to convey the intended meaning accurately.

How to make questions in reported speech?

To make questions in reported speech, you need to use an introductory phrase such as “asked” or “wondered” followed by the question word (if applicable), subject, and verb. You also need to change the word order to make it a statement. Here are the steps to make questions in reported speech:

Identify the reporting verb: The first step is to identify the reporting verb in the sentence. Common reporting verbs used to report questions include “asked,” “inquired,” “wondered,” and “wanted to know.”

Change the tense and pronouns: Next, you need to change the tense and pronouns in the sentence to reflect the shift from direct to reported speech. The tense of the verb is usually shifted back one tense (e.g. from present simple to past simple) in reported speech. The pronouns should also be changed as necessary to reflect the shift in perspective from the original speaker to the reporting speaker.

Use an appropriate question word: If the original question contained a question word (e.g. who, what, where, when, why, how), you should use the same question word in the reported question. If the original question did not contain a question word, you can use “if” or “whether” to introduce the reported question.

Change the word order: In reported speech, the word order of the question changes from the inverted form to a normal statement form. The subject usually comes before the verb, unless the original question started with a question word.

Here are some examples of reported questions:

Direct speech: “Did you finish your homework?”Reported speech: He wanted to know if I had finished my homework. Direct speech: “Where are you going?”Reported speech: She wondered where I was going.

Remember that when making questions in reported speech, the introductory phrases and verb tenses are important to convey the intended meaning accurately.

Here you can find more examples of direct and indirect questions

What is the difference between reported speech an indirect speech?

In reported or indirect speech, you are retelling or reporting what someone said using your own words. The tense of the reported speech is usually shifted back one tense from the tense used in the original statement. For example, if someone said, “I am going to the store,” in reported speech you would say, “He/she said that he/she was going to the store.”

The main difference between reported speech and indirect speech is that reported speech usually refers to spoken language, while indirect speech can refer to both spoken and written language. Additionally, indirect speech is a broader term that includes reported speech as well as other ways of expressing what someone else has said, such as paraphrasing or summarizing.

Examples of direct speech to reported

• Direct speech: “I am hungry,” she said. Reported speech: She said she was hungry.
• Direct speech: “Can you pass the salt, please?” he asked. Reported speech: He asked her to pass the salt.
• Direct speech: “I will meet you at the cinema,” he said. Reported speech: He said he would meet her at the cinema.
• Direct speech: “I have been working on this project for hours,” she said. Reported speech: She said she had been working on the project for hours.
• Direct speech: “What time does the train leave?” he asked. Reported speech: He asked what time the train left.
• Direct speech: “I love playing the piano,” she said. Reported speech: She said she loved playing the piano.
• Direct speech: “I am going to the grocery store,” he said. Reported speech: He said he was going to the grocery store.
• Direct speech: “Did you finish your homework?” the teacher asked. Reported speech: The teacher asked if he had finished his homework.
• Direct speech: “I want to go to the beach,” she said. Reported speech: She said she wanted to go to the beach.
• Direct speech: “Do you need help with that?” he asked. Reported speech: He asked if she needed help with that.
• Direct speech: “I can’t come to the party,” he said. Reported speech: He said he couldn’t come to the party.
• Direct speech: “Please don’t leave me,” she said. Reported speech: She begged him not to leave her.
• Direct speech: “I have never been to London before,” he said. Reported speech: He said he had never been to London before.
• Direct speech: “Where did you put my phone?” she asked. Reported speech: She asked where she had put her phone.
• Direct speech: “I’m sorry for being late,” he said. Reported speech: He apologized for being late.
• Direct speech: “I need some help with this math problem,” she said. Reported speech: She said she needed some help with the math problem.
• Direct speech: “I am going to study abroad next year,” he said. Reported speech: He said he was going to study abroad the following year.
• Direct speech: “Can you give me a ride to the airport?” she asked. Reported speech: She asked him to give her a ride to the airport.
• Direct speech: “I don’t know how to fix this,” he said. Reported speech: He said he didn’t know how to fix it.
• Direct speech: “I hate it when it rains,” she said. Reported speech: She said she hated it when it rained.

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Reporting Verbs in English: List with Examples & Exercises

Reporting verbs are used when you want to tell someone about another conversation. We also call this reported speech or indirect speech. Two examples of reporting verbs are say and tell. There are many others and these have different meanings and grammar structures. In this study guide, we’ll look at examples of these verbs and show you how to use them correctly. We’ll also look at reporting verbs to improve your academic writing. Let’s go!

What are reporting verbs?

Reporting verbs list.

• How do I use them?

Reporting verbs in academic writing

• Test your knowledge: exercises

What you will learn: 

Reporting verbs (or referring verbs) are words used to report about (or refer to) what another person has said, written or done. These verbs are used in reported speech, which can be direct or indirect.

The first reporting verbs that English students learn are usually say and tell . For example compare i) and ii) below:

• “It’s my birthday next weekend. Please, make a birthday cake for me!” Charlotte said to her mum ( direct speech)

Charlotte told her mum to make a birthday cake for her. ( indirect speech)

There are many other reporting verbs in English. These can be particularly useful in formal and academic writing.

General reporting verbs

In this table, we have listed out some common reporting verbs that are used in everyday English. To help you understand how to correctly place them in a sentence, we have put them into approximate categories based on their most common usage. However, you should remember that some of these reporting verbs can be used in difference contexts and sometimes with different grammar structures.

Academic reporting verbs

In the table below, we’ve listed out the reporting verbs in groups based on their general meanings. We have also indicated the relative “strength” of each verb. For example, if I imply (suggest/hint, weak) that you are wrong, this is very different from if I assert (state/say, strong) that you are wrong. Remember that English is seldom “black vs. white” – there are often several degrees of meaning.

How do I use reporting verbs?

Understanding what the verbs mean is generally the easiest step. You see a new word, you learn what the word means in your own language and you learn how to pronounce it in English. In actual fact, you can only really say you’ve learnt a word when you also know how to accurately use it in a sentence.

Let’s return to our example with Charlotte’s birthday cake:

 “It’s my birthday next weekend. Make a birthday cake for me,” Charlotte said to her mum ( direct speech)

Easy, right? Now let’s consider that there are many other ways that Charlotte could say this in English. Depending on what she said and how she said it, you might need to use a different reporting verb, not just say or tell . For example:

• If you want to express the idea of “ Don’t forget ” “ Don’t forget to make a birthday cake for me.” Charlotte reminded her mum to make a cake.
• If you want to express the idea of “ No, I don’t want to do something ” (i) “ I’m not going to make my own birthday cake!” Charlotte said that she wouldn’t make her own cake.(ii) “ I’m not going to make my birthday cake. You can do it!” Charlotte refused to make a cake. (iii) “I’ve got lots of work to do this weekend and I might be too busy for other things”Charlotte hinted that she wouldn’t make the cake.  

In these sentences, there are three different verbs (say, hint, refuse). They all mean “no” but say is a neutral verb, hint is a weak verb, and refuse is much stronger .

• If you want to express the idea of “Please do this!” “ Can you make a birthday cake for me, please ?” Charlotte asked her mum to make a cake. “ Please, please, please, can you make a cake for my birthday?” Charlotte begged her mum to make a cake (or) Charlotte pleaded with her mum to make a birthday cake. Ask, plead and beg all have a similar meaning, but plead and beg are much stronger than ask.

Learning words in English is like collecting bricks to build a house. It’s not enough just to get the bricks. You also need to learn how to arrange them correctly so that your house is solid! You can’t build a good house from just a couple of bricks (e.g. say and tell). That’s why you need to learn more vocabulary – like reporting verbs. We don’t want the Big Bad Wolf to blow your house down!

Let’s take a look at HOW to use reporting verbs in real sentences. Below, we have divided the verbs into their different grammar structures so they are easier for you to learn.

1. Reporting verb + infinitive

Verbs: Refuse, decide, promise, demand, agree, threaten, plead with Examples:

• Charlotte refused to make a cake. ( NOT : Charlotte refused making a cake)
• My boss decided to give me a promotion.
• The teacher demanded to know who was responsible for the mess.
• We agreed to keep quiet and not tell anyone the news. (or) We agreed that we would keep quiet.
• We threatened to go to the police.
• They pleaded with the man to release the hostage.

2. Reporting verb + somebody + (not) infinitive

Verbs : remind, ask, beg, warn , order, encourage, persuade, advise, urge, agree Examples :

• Charlotte reminded her mum to make a cake.
• They asked me to cook
• He begged his friend not to tell
• They warned me not to go there by myself.
• The government has ordered everybody to stay at home.
• Her parents always encourage her to work
• They persuaded me to stay for another drink.
• The doctor advised me to stop
• Our new neighbours have invited us to have dinner with them tomorrow.

3. Reporting verb + verb +ing

Verbs: Deny, suggest, recommend, report, propose, admit

These verbs can be used with +ing or with that , but it’s generally better to be concise and use the +ing verb. Short and sweet! Examples :

• They denied taking the last biscuit. (short) (or) They denied that they had taken the last biscuit. (long)
• She admitted stealing the money. (or) She admitted that she had stolen the money. / She admitted to me that she had stolen the money.
• She suggested taking a taxi because it would be quicker. (or) She suggested that we took a taxi.
• I recommend going in the morning when the weather isn’t so hot. (or) I recommend ( that) we go in the morning.
• I propose cancelling the next meeting until we have made a decision. (or) I propose that we cancel the next meeting.

4. Reporting verb + preposition + verb + ing

Verbs: Blame smbd for, accuse smbd of, insist on, apologise for, complain about, confess to, forbid smbd from, agree to, think about Examples :

• They blamed me for missing the train.
• She accused her friend of
• He apologised for breaking the window.
• She is thinking about moving to France.
• He insisted on paying for everybody. / He insisted that he paid for everybody.
• They complained about not having a small hotel room. / They complained that they didn’t have a bigger room.

The reporting verbs we use in academic writing also follow specific grammatical patterns. Again, it is important to know whether the verb needs +ing, the infinitive , or that after it.

5. Academic reporting verb + that

Verbs: Point out, find, observe , state, agree, believe, assert, claim, contend, explain, guess, assert, imply, reason, prove, note, report, reveal.

• Bosley (2017) found that elderly patients experience fewer symptoms of pain when they have regular access to some form of nature. (or) Bosley (2017) found a link between symptoms and access to nature. ( find smth )
• Martinez (2008) and Zhang (2009) agree that … (or) Martinez (2008) and Zhang (2009) agree with this theory . ( agree with + smth/smbd )
• Persson (2003) claims that a community is impossible without a shared aim.
• Research conducted by Bradwell in 2017 revealed that there was a considerable difference in the amount of time UK and US teenagers spent with their families. (or) Research conducted by Bradwell in 2017 revealed a considerable difference in the amount of time UK and US teenagers spent with their families.

6. Academic reporting verb + smth

Verbs: Develop, study, focus on, acknowledge, doubt, contribute to, echo, subscribe to, question, disapprove of, dispute, reject, discuss, investigate, illustrate, present, outline, put forward, consider, support, emphasise, challenge, analyse, discard, identify, explore, propose, highlight, stress. Examples:

• Wang (2016) supports the idea that there is a significant link between play and child development. NOT : Wang (2016) supports that there is a significant link between play and child development.  
• Roberts (2018) identifies three possible factors in early diagnosis.
• Solara (2015) questions the importance of this approach. (or) Solara (2015)  questions whether this approach is important.
• Barboza (2018) rejects the three factors presented by Solara.
• Miller (2016) discusses this theory in detail. NOT : Miller (2016) discusses about this theory in detail

In academic writing, reporting verbs are used when you want to refer to what another person has said. You do this to strengthen your own argument and to show that other academics think the same as you.

It would be easy to just learn the verb “to state”, and use this all the time. However, using a range of other verbs can allow you to express your opinion about the author’s idea more precisely. For example, “to state” is quite neutral , but “to claim” implies that there is no proof behind what the author is saying.

Past or present tense?

You can use both the past and the present tense in academic writing.

If you are talking about recent research, use the present. This makes a connection between past research and now, which adds weight to your argument.

• Wang (2016) support s the idea that there is a significant link between play and child development. (present simple)

If you are talking about how research was conducted, you will need to use the past simple (either active or passive voice).

• Wang (2016) examin ed fifty groups of siblings. (past simple) The siblings were asked the following questions. (passive voice)

Avoid these common mistakes!

• It’s possible to express someone’s opinion using “According to…”. This does not need a reporting verb. “According to” does the job of a reporting verb already. e.g. “According to Covey (2017)…” (Not: “ According to Covey (2017) states that… ”)
• A source written by one author will need a singular verb with “-s” at the end e.g. “Liu (2016) suggest s that…” (Not: “ Liu (2016) suggest that… ”)
• A source written by more than one author will need a plural verb. e.g. “Liu and Helzer (2016) suggest that…” (Not: “ Liu and Helzer (2016) suggests that… ”)
• If you use “et al.” to indicate multiple authors, this will also require a plural verb as it means “they”. e.g. “Rosenberg et al. (2018) argue that…” (Not: “ Rosenberg et al. (2018) argues that…” )

Reporting verbs: Exercises

• Why didn’t you _____________ me that you don’t eat meat? a) say.  b) tell
• I didn’t ____________ anything to you, because I was too worried. a) tell.    b) say
• We __________ them to meet us in the main square at half past eleven. a) told.  b) said
• You should ________ her that you don’t want to go on holiday. a) say.  b) tell
• Are you going to ___________ anything to Sue about your good news? a) say.  b) tell
• They have ________ that we will need to bring our own bed linen and towels. a) told.    b) said

Which of these sentences are right and which are wrong? Choose correct or incorrect.

• She suggested to study together for the exam. a . Correct    b. Incorrect
• I said you not to do that. a. Correct    b. Incorrect
• I didn’t tell anyone anything. a . Correct.  b . Incorrect
• We have decided live in the countryside. a. Correct    b. Incorrect
• My grandmother always encouraged to learn to cook. a. Correct    b. Incorrect

Choose the correct verb to complete the sentences.

• She invited me ________ to her house for a drink after work. a. go    b. going  c. to go
• She asked me _________ some money. a. lending    b. to lend    c . to lend her
• They persuaded me _________ to London with them. a. go    b. to go    c. of going
• He advised _______ more exercise. a. I do    b. me to do    c. me doing
• He begged me not _______ anybody about the accident. a. of telling    b. tell    c. to tell
• He reminded ________ to renew the car insurance. a . to me    b. me    c. of me
• She refused _______ the washing-up again! a. me to do    b. to do.  c. doing
• She apologised _________ me an angry text message. a. of sending. b. for sending    c. sending
• He admitted ________ the red wine on the sofa. a. spilling    b. to spill    c. spill of
• He suggested _________ on a cycling holiday next year. a. go    b . going c. we going
• He denied _________ my car. a. taking    b . to take    c. taking of
• She decided __________ the risotto. a. having.  b. to have    c. to having

Exercise 1:

Exercise 2:

• b. Incorrect (She suggested studying together for the exam.)
• b. Incorrect (I told you not to do that.)
• b. Incorrect (We have decided to live in the countryside.)
• b. Incorrect (My grandmother always encouraged me to learn to cook.)

Exercise 3:

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Difference Between: Inquiry vs. Enquiry

Inquiry and enquiry sound the same (ɪnkwaɪəri), but have different meanings in British English. Inquiry means ‘official investigation’ – e.g. The government launched an inquiry into corruption. Enquiry means ‘a question about something’ – e.g. The gym received an enquiry about its opening hours. Americans only use inquiry .

Present Perfect Tense: How To Use It Correctly (With Examples)

The present perfect is a commonly used tense, but can cause a great deal of confusion for learners of English! In this guide, we will look at the correct way to use the present perfect tense, provide examples and go over some common mistakes to avoid. Don’t forget to check out the quiz exercises at the end to test your understanding.

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Reporting verbs help you introduce the ideas or words of others as paraphrase or quotation from scholarly literature. Always accompanied by a reference, they indicate where you’re drawing on other people’s work to build your own argument. They also indicate  your stance  (agree, disagree, etc) on the scholarship you’re describing, highlighting your critical contribution. There are lots of reporting verbs to choose from and, depending on the context, they might be used to convey more than one stance, so you’ll notice that some appear in more than one category. 

The following reporting verbs have been organised according to the critical stances they signal.

Neutral description of what the text says

Reporting verbs.

• Observes 
• Describes 
• Discusses 
• Reports 
• Outlines 
• Remarks 
• States 
• Goes on to say that 
• Quotes that 
• Mentions 
• Articulates 
• Writes  
• Relates  
• Conveys 

Abrams mentions that culture shock has “long been misunderstood as a primarily psychological phenomenon” (34)  

Chakrabarty outlines the four stages of mitosis (72-3)

Acceptance as uncontested fact, having critiqued it

• Recognises 
• Clarifies 
• Acknowledges 
• Concedes 
• Accepts 
• Refutes 
• Uncovers 
• Admits 
• Demonstrates 
• Highlights 
• Illuminates 
• Supports  
• Concludes 
• Elucidates 
• Reveals 
• Verifies  

Abrams refutes the idea that culture shock is a “primarily psychological phenomenon” (34)

Chakrabarty demonstrates that mitosis actually occurs over five stages (73)

Recognition that this is one perspective on or interpretation of an issue or conclusion, and others might be possible

• Argues 
• Reasons 
• Maintains 
• Contends 
• Hypothesises 
• Proposes 
• Theorises  
• Feels 
• Considers 
• Asserts 
• Disputes 
• Advocates 
• Opines  
• Thinks  
• Implies  
• Posits 

Abrams contends that culture shock is socially produced (38)

Chakrabarty hypothesises that metaphase is a more complex process than previously thought (77)

Agreement with that perspective, interpretation or conclusion

• Shows 
• Illustrates  
• Points out 
• Proves 
• Finds 
• Explains 
• Agrees 
• Confirms 
• Identifies 
• Evidences  
• Attests  

Abrams points out that culture shock is a “stress response mechanism” (34)

Chakrabarty proves that mitosis is irreversible, once triggered (80)

Disagreement with that perspective, interpretation or conclusion

• Believes 
• Claims 
• Justifies 
• Insists  
• Assumes  
• Alleges 
• Denies 
• Speculates  
• Disregards 
• Supposes  
• Conjectures  
• Surmises 

Abrams’ analysis disregards the neurochemical factors that contribute to culture shock (36)

Chakrabarty speculates that “metaphase is the most important stage of mitosis” (78)

Slight reservations held - probably true but being cautious

Reporting verb.

• Notes 
• Suggests 
• Challenges 
• Critiques  
• Emphasises 
• Declares 
• Indicates 
• Comments 
• Upholds  

Abrams asserts that theories of culture shock have moved away from psychological explanations.

Chakrabarty emphasises the role of metaphase within mitosis (78)

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Reported Speech – Rules, Examples & Worksheet

| Candace Osmond

Candace Osmond

Candace Osmond studied Advanced Writing & Editing Essentials at MHC. She’s been an International and USA TODAY Bestselling Author for over a decade. And she’s worked as an Editor for several mid-sized publications. Candace has a keen eye for content editing and a high degree of expertise in Fiction.

They say gossip is a natural part of human life. That’s why language has evolved to develop grammatical rules about the “he said” and “she said” statements. We call them reported speech.

Every time we use reported speech in English, we are talking about something said by someone else in the past. Thinking about it brings me back to high school, when reported speech was the main form of language!

Learn all about the definition, rules, and examples of reported speech as I go over everything. I also included a worksheet at the end of the article so you can test your knowledge of the topic.

What Does Reported Speech Mean?

Reported speech is a term we use when telling someone what another person said. You can do this while speaking or writing.

There are two kinds of reported speech you can use: direct speech and indirect speech. I’ll break each down for you.

A direct speech sentence mentions the exact words the other person said. For example:

• Kryz said, “These are all my necklaces.”

Indirect speech changes the original speaker’s words. For example:

• Kryz said those were all her necklaces.

When we tell someone what another individual said, we use reporting verbs like told, asked, convinced, persuaded, and said. We also change the first-person figure in the quotation into the third-person speaker.

Reported Speech Examples

We usually talk about the past every time we use reported speech. That’s because the time of speaking is already done. For example:

• Direct speech: The employer asked me, “Do you have experience with people in the corporate setting?”

Indirect speech: The employer asked me if I had experience with people in the corporate setting.

• Direct speech: “I’m working on my thesis,” I told James.

Indirect speech: I told James that I was working on my thesis.

Reported Speech Structure

A speech report has two parts: the reporting clause and the reported clause. Read the example below:

• Harry said, “You need to help me.”

The reporting clause here is William said. Meanwhile, the reported clause is the 2nd clause, which is I need your help.

What are the 4 Types of Reported Speech?

Aside from direct and indirect, reported speech can also be divided into four. The four types of reported speech are similar to the kinds of sentences: imperative, interrogative, exclamatory, and declarative.

Reported Speech Rules

The rules for reported speech can be complex. But with enough practice, you’ll be able to master them all.

Choose Whether to Use That or If

The most common conjunction in reported speech is that. You can say, “My aunt says she’s outside,” or “My aunt says that she’s outside.”

Use if when you’re reporting a yes-no question. For example:

• Direct speech: “Are you coming with us?”

Indirect speech: She asked if she was coming with them.

Verb Tense Changes

Change the reporting verb into its past form if the statement is irrelevant now. Remember that some of these words are irregular verbs, meaning they don’t follow the typical -d or -ed pattern. For example:

• Direct speech: I dislike fried chicken.

Reported speech: She said she disliked fried chicken.

Note how the main verb in the reported statement is also in the past tense verb form.

Use the simple present tense in your indirect speech if the initial words remain relevant at the time of reporting. This verb tense also works if the report is something someone would repeat. For example:

• Slater says they’re opening a restaurant soon.
• Maya says she likes dogs.

This rule proves that the choice of verb tense is not a black-and-white question. The reporter needs to analyze the context of the action.

Move the tense backward when the reporting verb is in the past tense. That means:

• Present simple becomes past simple.
• Present perfect becomes past perfect.
• Present continuous becomes past continuous.
• Past simple becomes past perfect.
• Past continuous becomes past perfect continuous.

Here are some examples:

• The singer has left the building. (present perfect)

He said that the singers had left the building. (past perfect)

• Her sister gave her new shows. (past simple)
• She said that her sister had given her new shoes. (past perfect)

If the original speaker is discussing the future, change the tense of the reporting verb into the past form. There’ll also be a change in the auxiliary verbs.

• Will or shall becomes would.
• Will be becomes would be.
• Will have been becomes would have been.
• Will have becomes would have.

For example:

• Direct speech: “I will be there in a moment.”

Indirect speech: She said that she would be there in a moment.

Do not change the verb tenses in indirect speech when the sentence has a time clause. This rule applies when the introductory verb is in the future, present, and present perfect. Here are other conditions where you must not change the tense:

• If the sentence is a fact or generally true.
• If the sentence’s verb is in the unreal past (using second or third conditional).
• If the original speaker reports something right away.
• Do not change had better, would, used to, could, might, etc.

Changes in Place and Time Reference

Changing the place and time adverb when using indirect speech is essential. For example, now becomes then and today becomes that day. Here are more transformations in adverbs of time and places.

• This – that.
• These – those.
• Now – then.
• Here – there.
• Tomorrow – the next/following day.
• Two weeks ago – two weeks before.
• Yesterday – the day before.

Here are some examples.

• Direct speech: “I am baking cookies now.”

Indirect speech: He said he was baking cookies then.

• Direct speech: “Myra went here yesterday.”

Indirect speech: She said Myra went there the day before.

• Direct speech: “I will go to the market tomorrow.”

Indirect speech: She said she would go to the market the next day.

Using Modals

If the direct speech contains a modal verb, make sure to change them accordingly.

• Will becomes would
• Can becomes could
• Shall becomes should or would.
• Direct speech: “Will you come to the ball with me?”

Indirect speech: He asked if he would come to the ball with me.

• Direct speech: “Gina can inspect the room tomorrow because she’s free.”

Indirect speech: He said Gina could inspect the room the next day because she’s free.

However, sometimes, the modal verb should does not change grammatically. For example:

• Direct speech: “He should go to the park.”

Indirect speech: She said that he should go to the park.

Imperative Sentences

To change an imperative sentence into a reported indirect sentence, use to for imperative and not to for negative sentences. Never use the word that in your indirect speech. Another rule is to remove the word please . Instead, say request or say. For example:

• “Please don’t interrupt the event,” said the host.

The host requested them not to interrupt the event.

• Jonah told her, “Be careful.”
• Jonah ordered her to be careful.

Reported Questions

When reporting a direct question, I would use verbs like inquire, wonder, ask, etc. Remember that we don’t use a question mark or exclamation mark for reports of questions. Below is an example I made of how to change question forms.

• Incorrect: He asked me where I live?

Correct: He asked me where I live.

Here’s another example. The first sentence uses direct speech in a present simple question form, while the second is the reported speech.

• Where do you live?

She asked me where I live.

Wrapping Up Reported Speech

My guide has shown you an explanation of reported statements in English. Do you have a better grasp on how to use it now?

Reported speech refers to something that someone else said. It contains a subject, reporting verb, and a reported cause.

Don’t forget my rules for using reported speech. Practice the correct verb tense, modal verbs, time expressions, and place references.

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• Sep 15, 2023

The Power of Reported Speech: Why It Matters in English

Have you ever found yourself in a conversation where you need to recount something someone else said? If you have, then you've used reported speech, a crucial aspect of the English language. In this blog, we'll explore what reported speech is, how to form verb tenses in reported speech, provide examples, and delve into why it's essential in real-life communication.

What is Reported Speech?

Reported speech, often referred to as indirect speech, is a method used to convey someone else's words or thoughts without quoting them directly. It's the bridge that allows us to share information, statements, or questions spoken by others. Reported speech is omnipresent in both written and spoken English, and mastering it is crucial for effective communication.

How to Form Verb Tenses in Reported Speech

In reported speech, the choice of verb tense depends on the relationship between the original statement (the direct speech) and the reporting sentence. Here's a breakdown of how to form verb tenses in reported speech:

Present Simple ➡ Past Simple:

Direct Speech: She said, "I work in a bank."

Reported Speech: She said that she worked in a bank.

Present Continuous ➡ Past Continuous:

Direct Speech: He said, "I am watching TV."

Reported Speech: He said that he was watching TV.

Present Perfect ➡ Past Perfect:

Direct Speech: They said, "We have already eaten."

Reported Speech: They said that they had already eaten.

Past Simple ➡ Past Perfect/Past Simple:

Direct Speech: He said, "I bought a new car."

Reported Speech: He said that he had bought a new car/He said that he bought a new car.

Will ➡ Would:

Direct Speech: She said, "I will call you."

Reported Speech: She said that she would call you.

Can ➡ Could:

Direct Speech: They said, "We can help."

Reported Speech: They said that they could help.

Examples of Reported Speech

Direct Speech: "I have a meeting tomorrow," she said.

Reported Speech: She said that she had a meeting the next day.

Direct Speech: "We are going to the beach," they said.

Reported Speech: They said that they were going to the beach.

Direct Speech: "He has been studying all night," he exclaimed.

Reported Speech: He exclaimed that he had been studying all night.

Direct Speech: "I can't believe it!" she shouted.

Reported Speech: She shouted that she couldn't believe it.

When to Use Reported Speech in Real Life

Reported speech serves a variety of essential functions in our everyday communication:

Sharing Information: We use reported speech to relay what someone else has said, whether it's in casual conversations or more formal settings like news reporting.

Narration and Storytelling: When telling stories or writing narratives, reported speech helps bring characters and dialogue to life, making the narrative more engaging.

Indirect Requests and Questions: When we wish to make a request or ask a question indirectly, reported speech comes in handy. For example, "She asked if you could help with the project."

Politeness and Diplomacy: Reported speech allows us to convey messages with tact and diplomacy. For instance, "He suggested that we reconsider our approach."

Academic and Professional Writing: In academic papers and professional reports, reported speech is used extensively to cite sources and incorporate others' viewpoints and research.

Reported speech is a fundamental aspect of the English language that facilitates effective communication by enabling us to share others' words and thoughts. Understanding how to form verb tenses in reported speech is essential for accuracy, and mastering this skill is invaluable in both personal and professional contexts. So, the next time you recount a conversation or tell a story, remember the power of reported speech in conveying messages with precision and nuance.

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American English vs. British English: A Linguistic Face-Off

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• Transcription

Reported or indirect speech

The first section mostly reiterates material in the initial training section and is here as a reminder of the basics.  You can skip this if you are already aware of the basic issues or have recently worked through the initial training section for this area. If that is the case, skim through what follows, and/or do the mini-test or use this menu to go to the area you need and then move on.  It's up to you.

At the end of each section, you can click on -top- to return to this menu, simply read on, scroll back or bookmark the page for another time.

In what follows, we are going to consider four sorts of utterances which are often reported:

• Statements such as:     It is in the cupboard which are usually reported with that- clauses
• Questions such as:     When did you go? which are usually reported with dependent wh -clauses
• Exclamations such as:     What a lovely view! which are usually reported with wh -clauses
• Commands such as:     Get this done today which are usually reported with to- infinitive clauses

On the left we have the direct speech – the words uttered. On the right we have reported or indirect speech – how the message is passed on.

On the face of it, there's nothing terribly difficult about this idea.  The tense shifts back one (from, e.g., was to had been, from can to could ) .  At the same time, I changes to he , we changes to they and so on. Here's a list of the changes in English.

A small but significant source of error in reporting in British English is that the intrusive got in, for example:     I have got enough money is dropped when the tense is backshifted so we get:     He said he had enough money However, when the structure is used to express either:

• strong obligation as in:      I have got to go now the got may be retained and the reporting becomes:     He said he had got to go then
• the sense of receive , as in:     I have got a letter from her the got may also be retained and the reporting becomes:     She said she had got a letter from her

Here's a definition:

The name given to those aspects of language whose interpretation is relative to the occasion of utterance Fillmore (1966) in Harman (1989)

It's an important phenomenon in this area because the use of deixis neatly explains a lot of the so-called anomalies of indirect speech.  Because meaning is dependent on the identity, point of view, time and location of the speaker / writer we are obliged (or not) to change, e.g., I to he or she, we to they , bring to come, come to go (and go to come ) , this to that, here to there, yesterday to the previous day, now to then, bring to take and so on. We make these changes because of a movement to the deictical centre.  This is usually I, now and here so we make changes to allow for this. There are three types of deixis which affect the way we report what people say:

• Personal deixis: We change pronouns to reflect who is addressing whom so we report, e.g.:     "Will you please come early?" as any of      She asked me to come early     She asked him / her to come early     She asked you to come early     She asked them to come early     She asked [name(s)] to come early depending on the context of who was addressed.
• we often need to change bring to take when reporting in another place.
• we often need to change this to that and these to those (and vice versa )
• Temporal deixis: When reporting times, we need to consider that most people will expect any utterance to be centred on now so we make the appropriate changes as in, e.g., reporting:     "I want to see you this afternoon" as     She asked to see me that afternoon and     "I'm leaving next year" as     She said she was leaving the following year if the reporting takes place much later.

In this regard, the following changes now make more sense:

Once again, we find that context makes meaning .

For more, there is a guide to deixis on this site, linked below, which includes a larger image of the wheel above and explains what it all means.

Of course, not all changes are always appropriate (but using the changes will usually be correct). If we are reporting something virtually simultaneously, then we often don't change the tense or time expressions.  If we are reporting something in the same place, then we don't change the place expressions. Another way of putting this is to refer to the encoding time (when the statement was made) and the decoding time (when the statement was reported).  If the encoding and decoding times are the same, few if any changes need to be made to time markers and tense forms. So we might get:     A: I'm going there now.     B: What did he say?     C: He said he's going there now However, if the encoding and decoding times are sufficiently separated, we do make changes accordingly so the exchange might end as:     He said he was going there then.

If an utterance remains true, we often don't change the tense so we get, e.g.,     I'm from South Africa = He said he's from South Africa     I love the countryside = She said she loves the countryside

Try this matching exercise to make sure you have understood so far.

Did you notice the changes, particularly with time and place expressions but also with the verb come (which changed to go )?

If you have followed so far, this will be familiar:

It's clear that we have examples of direct speech and indirect speech here in sentences 1, 4, 2 and 5 but Sentence 6 is what is called a hybrid form because the first part follows the 'rules' but the second part actually changes only the pronoun, from you to I . If the sentence followed the reported speech 'rules', it should be     He said I was welcome to come and asked if I would like to bring Mary which is another possibility, of course, but sounds quite formal.

Statements or declarative utterances are routinely reported using that- clauses as in, for example:

There are two things to notice even with the simplest type of reporting of direct statements.

• The omission of that . All the examples in the table here include that .  However, it can be and routinely is omitted (something which, incidentally, is not allowed in some languages which have a parallel structure). When it is omitted, it is still, in technical terms a that- clause but referred to as a zero- that- clause, often written as Ø-that -clause . When the clause is short and concise, that is conventionally ellipted so most users of English will prefer:     She said it's OK rather than:     She said that it's OK However, if the utterance is structurally heavy, including multiple adverbials, subordinated and coordinated clauses and other modifiers, it is usually stylistically inappropriate to ellipt that .  For example, if we report:     Mary explained, "Up to now, I had always assumed the guy in the suit was the boss of the enterprise but now I see I was mistaken." we would normally include that in indirect speech and have:     Mary explained that she had up to then she had always assumed that the guy in the suit was the boss of the enterprise but now she saw that she was mistaken.
• Reporting verbs. If we report something like:     "It's the switch on the left," explained Peter. we may choose to structure the report differently and simply have:     Peter explained which switch it was rather than the more tortuous:     Peter explained that it was the switch on the left. There is more on reporting verbs below.

Incidentally, the rule for ordering in direct speech is that you cannot reverse the verb and subject pronoun but you can reverse a noun or noun phrase subject and verb.  We allow, therefore:     "That's the bus," said John and     "That's the bus," John said and     "That's the bus," he said but     "That's the bus,", said he is now hopelessly archaic.

Closed questions are those which require a Yes or No response and they are usually reported with if or whether .  We get, therefore, for example:     Are you going to the cinema? reported as     He asked her if she was going to the cinema There is a bit more to it, however.

Consider what direct speech is being reported in the following.

• I asked whether there were any good recipes in it.
• I asked if there were any good recipes in it.
• She wondered whether to go.
• He asked whether or not they could come.

When you have done that, try reporting these sentences (from the point of view of later and elsewhere). Then click to reveal the comment .

• “Are they English?” she asked
• “Are they English?” he wondered
• “I’m wondering whether to join you.” she said
• "Can I talk to you?" asked Mary

You should have something like:

• "Are there any good recipes in it?" I asked
• "Shall I go?" she wondered / asked herself
• "Can they come?" he enquired
• She asked whether / if they were English
• He wondered whether they were English
• She was wondering whether to join us
• She asked whether / if she could speak to me

In reporting a direct question, you can use if or whether interchangeably but if you are reporting someone's thoughts and doubts, only whether is usually the choice.

The other important thing to make sure that learners get right is the word ordering when reporting a question.  There are three issues to consider:

• The word order in these clauses is the one we would expect for a normal declarative statement.  We have, e.g.:     I asked if he was coming not     *I asked if was he coming
• The do, does, did operator which is used for forming questions in present and past simple tenses is not used in a reported question.  We have, e.g.:     I enquired if she worked in London not     *I enquired if did she work in London
• There is no reversal of subject and object with primary or modal auxiliary verbs.  We have, e.g.:     He wondered if she could manage the project not     *He wondered if could she manage the project

Many languages do not work this way and the transfer from L 1 to L T often produces errors like:     *She asked were they English     *She wondered should she go     *They enquired whether did the train stop at Margate?

Questions phrased using wh- words: who, what, why, when, which, where, how cannot be predicted to have a Yes-No-Maybe answer. Questions formed in this way cannot be reported with if or whether .  The reporting is done by embedding the questions. This means that reporting this type of question requires a different word ordering from that used in reporting yes-no questions (see above) and that is non-intuitive.  Many learners, having struggled to get the word ordering of yes-no questions right, logically transfer the rule concerning not disturbing the natural word ordering to wh-question s with resulting error.  We can get, therefore:     *She asked me where is the station     *They enquired when are we coming     *She asked what did I do for a living etc.

Embedding is often associated with polite questioning so, instead of the direct:     Where is the station? we form polite embedded questions such as     Can you tell me where the station is?

So it is with reported questions.  Thus:

The tense chosen will often conform to the time and place of the reporting using the common-sense rules discussed above although back-shifting tenses where possible is common even when the reporting is virtually simultaneous.

The big issue for learners with this kind of reporting is the ordering of the subject and verb.  Most first languages will lead learners to produce errors such as:     *Can you tell me when is the film beginning?     *Do you know who is the lady there? etc. And this will also carry over to reported questions so we get:     *She asked me where is the zoo     *They enquired what time did the train leave and so on.

Other reporting verbs such as explain, clarify, complain, mention, remember and state will produce similar errors because the structures are parallel to reported questions in English but not parallelled in many other languages.  We may encounter, therefore:     *She explained how did the machine work     *They clarified what did they need     *I remembered where was I going

There is more on the quirky nature of some reporting verbs below.

If the direct question is formed with who, which or what with the verb be as part of the predicate, it is possible to disturb the word order outlined above.  For example, the following can be reported in two ways, like this:

However, the word ordering with the reversal of subject and verb is always correct, so, for teaching purposes, that is the way to go.  Your learners may, however, encounter this disturbance so it's as well to be prepared for it and note that it only occurs in the limited circumstances set out here.

The disturbed word order is, however, always conventional when the question involves be as a simple copula with an adjectival attribute.  So, for example:     Which is best? is reported as:     She asked which was best not as:     *She asked which best was

What are the rules for using that and what in reported speech?  Report the following using that or what if possible and then reveal the commentary .

• "I am coming now."
• "I don't know her name."
• "What's your name?"
• "My name is Mary."
• "I will not go if it rains"

Rule 1: you can't use that in reporting questions or if -clauses. So we can have:     He said (that) he was coming then / is coming now     She said (that) she didn't / doesn't know her name     She said (that) her name is / was Mary but not:     *He asked that is her name     *She said she would not go that if it rained Rule 2: Conditional sentences may be back-shifted but that may not be used in them. At all other times, that can be dropped with no loss of sense, but some loss of formality. On the dropping or not of that with bridge and non-bridge verbs, see below. Rule 3: to report open questions , we have choices.  We can't use that but we can, with a change to an embedded question, use what :     He asked her her name / He asked her what her name was but not, usually:     ?He asked her what was her name

As we saw in part 1 of this guide, tense shifting is common in English and it is rarely wrong to do it.  However:

• If the reporting verb is in the present, we don't shift tenses.  So we get     She often says, "I don't know what to do" changing to     She often says she doesn't know what to do     "There was a nasty accident here last night," John informs me changing to     John tells me there was a nasty accident here / there last night. (Note that last night does not change because the reporting is of a recent utterance.)
• If the validity of what was said still holds.  For example:     Darwin wrote, "There is grandeur in this view of life." changes to      Darwin wrote that there is grandeur in this view of life. not to     Darwin wrote that there was grandeur in this view of life
• Although back-shifting could be used in all the above examples, there are rare times when it actually produces nonsense.  Try reporting     "I chose to study French because it was a beautiful language." Will you accept     He said he had chosen to study French because it had been a beautiful language ?

We saw above that question forms are reported differently from statements.  How would you report these?  Click here to reveal some comments .

• "What awful weather!" she exclaimed.
• "Stop fidgeting!" she said to John.
• "Stop fidgeting," she growled.

Sentence 19 could be rendered as     She exclaimed / said / remarked loudly what awful weather it was . It can't be reported without a change of grammar. Sentence 20 can be reported as     She told John to stop fidgeting but ... Sentence 21 can't be reported this way.  It has to be something like     She growled at John to stop fidgeting Note that we have to insert the object here.

Essentially, there are three types.  Can you categorise this list into three groups?  Click to reveal , as usual.

The simple reporting verbs in the left-hand column often require only the deixis, pronoun and tense shifts covered in this guide.  So we can have, e.g.:

in which the verbs are arranged in relation to the strength of the statement made so, for example:     "I must have the steak," she said could be reported as:     She insisted on having the steak and     "I'd like the steak," she said as     She said she'd like the steak but     "I wonder if I might have the steak," she said as     She enquired whether she could have the steak This has some pedagogical utility, of course, because it gives learners a way of understanding the connotations of the verbs. However, the categories are not unarguable and people will put different verbs in different boxes.  It is a rule of thumb at best.

Some reporting verbs are used to report an embedded or fronted comment clause so, for example, something like:     "She is, as you well know, quite capable." may be reported as:     He insisted that I knew that she was quite capable. Other comment clauses such as in:     "Well, to be honest, I don't have a clue." and     "As you know, I've been living here for years." may be reported using an appropriate reporting verb but maintaining the adverbial as:     He explained that he honestly didn't have a clue. or as:     He reminded me that he had been living there for years.

There is a difference in the way that such clauses are reported depending on the role of the disjunct adverbial.

• Style disjuncts express the speaker / writer's view of what is being expressed and how it should be understood.  So, for example:     "Seriously, I don't think it will arrive in time." expresses how the speaker wishes to be understood and may be reported as:     She seriously doubted whether it would arrive in time.
• Attitude disjuncts indicate how generally the speaker wants to be understood or what limitations apply and they are reported using the same disjuncts usually (so are considerably easier to form).  For example:     "More or less, that's the same conclusion I arrived at." and      "Administrationally, this is quite a simple matter." can be reported simple as:     He said that it was more or less the same conclusion he had arrived at. and     She said it was administrationally quite a simple matter.

Purely for information, there's a PDF of a list of reporting verbs in English list which considers the syntactical restraints concerned with them.  The list also includes some consideration of the functions of reporting verbs and categorises them accordingly. Click to download a list of reporting verbs . Don't try to teach them all at once!

There is also a guide to the kinds of reporting verbs used in academic writing, linked below, which contains a list of over 150 verbs such as state, aver, suggest, discount, dismiss, investigate etc.

The issue here is whether one can omit the word that from a reported statement. The theoretical distinction is between what are called bridge verbs and non-bridge verbs.  Many simple reporting verbs verbs such as say, tell, think, know, write, claim and hear are bridge verbs and it is perfectly in order to omit the word that when they are followed by a clause so we allow both:     He said that he was coming tomorrow     John thinks that it's too expensive     She claims that she lost the money etc. and:     He said he was coming tomorrow     John thinks it's too expensive     She claims she lost the money Many find (that) the sentences without that are more stylistically acceptable.

However, some verbs, exemplified above with verbs like cry, sneer and shout , refer not only to what was said but to how it was said and these are often non-bridge verbs and leaving out that results in clumsiness at best.  For example, many people find:     She shouted she was coming     She whispered the chairman was drunk     He lied he was married     They acknowledged coming late was rude are all clumsy or even wrong and should be expressed with that as:     She shouted that she was coming     She whispered that the chairman was drunk     He lied that he was married     They acknowledged that coming late was rude In general terms, the less common and more loaded reporting verbs require that when followed by a clause . Here are some examples of how non-bridge verbs are used when reporting:

In all those case where we choose to follow the reporting verb with a clause, the insertion of that is almost obligatory. In the last case, not including that results in:     The minister conceded having long periods of unemployment made it difficult to get work in the future which forces the hearer to reconsider who has long periods of unemployment.

In academic writing simple verbs are often avoided for the sake of style or precision and less frequently used so non-bridge verbs are usually preferred.  For example:      Guru confirms that the results are reliable     He acknowledged that the experiment was flawed     The findings indicate that there is a need for ...     She emphasises that findings are provisional all sound clumsy without that .

Clause length is a factor which tends to override the omission of that even with simple reporting verbs so while, for example:     I said, without much optimism based on his previous track record, he would come is correct and the omission of that is acceptable, most native speakers would insert it to signal the subordinate clause as:     I said, without much optimism based on his previous track record, that he would come

The categories are not watertight but once a learner has decided on a speaker's intentions in terms of the function of what was said (rather than the form), it becomes a good deal simpler to select an appropriate reporting verb providing, of course, that the structural constraints which apply to many of them are understood, too. Should you wish it, that list is included in the list of reporting verbs with the colligational characteristics, available here .

Reporting verbs for true questions form a restricted set which is straightforward to teach.  Almost a complete list is:     ask, enquire, want to know, wonder For example:

However, question forms also routinely perform other functions than asking for information and when this happens, other reporting verbs are necessary to reflect the illocutionary force of the utterance. Like this:

As with much in language, we have to look at the function, not the form, to decide on the right way to report the words.

Colligation with reporting verbs is something of a headache for learners of English and there are numerous constraints and possibilities. Reporting verbs can be categorised by what they may be followed by and it is certainly not intuitive to understand, for example, that we can say:     He confirmed that I had passed but we cannot say:     *He congratulated that I passed Here are some of the common issues.  For a list of reporting verbs and their grammatical constraints and possibilities, download the PDF file from the link above or at the end.

There are times when the source of something said or written is obscure, unknown or unimportant and others when we wish to disguise the source and in these cases a passive clause construction with the dummy it comes to the rescue. In academic texts the structure is also used to cite something so well known in a field of enquiry that it needs no sourcing. For example:     It has been suggested that ...     It is often questioned whether ...     It has been asked whether ...     It is generally reckoned that ... and so on. These constructions are not difficult to teach and are communicatively very useful ways of avoiding the need to say who said or wrote something.

Sometimes, we can use the same kind of passive construction without the dummy pronoun when the source of what has been said or written is unknown, absent or unimportant.  For example:     She has been told to ...     I have often be accused of ...     They are said to be ...     The house is reputed to be ... etc.

At other times, we may wish to emphasise the source of a statement and the passive is also used in this way, of course, so we may encounter, for example:     I have been accused by Mary of ...     She has been asked by the boss to ...     The comment has been made by the department head that ... and so on.

Modal auxiliary verbs are frequently defective insofar as some have no tense forms at all, some have past and future forms which use a different verb altogether and some only have tense forms in certain meanings.  It is a complicated area.  (For more, follow some of the guides from the index of modality.)

There is nothing very difficult about the form of reported speech changes (providing a learner is already familiar with the tense forms of English).  However:

• Because of the 'common sense' issues touched on above, you need to make sure that the language is very clearly set in a time-and-place context.
• It is almost impossible to practise the form changes in class by getting students to report each other's utterances because time and place remain static.  You need to spread the practice over time and place to be authentic.
• You need to make sure that learners are aware of the common-sense issues and don't slavishly transform every utterance.
• Languages deal with the issues differently.  Some, for example, reserve a subjunctive tense for reported speech and some hardly make any changes at all.

Teaching the mechanics of indirect speech is not too challenging providing the learners have a grasp of the tense forms and pronoun systems but one does need to address different forms separately or it all becomes a mass of data that bewilders learners. A sensible approach is to apply the analysis as above, focusing on reporting declarative statements, yes-no questions, open, wh- questions, exclamations, orders and so on separately before making any attempt to combine ideas.

Here's an idea for teaching indirect speech and still applying the common-sense rules.

Obviously, this is contrived and artificial to some extent but it is personalised and situates the language temporally and spatially.  It is certainly better than meaningless sentence-transformation exercises.

Because the word order when reporting questions and using a number of the reporting verbs is a common source of error, it is worth practising separately.  Fortunately, the use of back-shifting, even for virtually simultaneous reporting, is also common so there is less need to set up delayed reporting.

• You have to teach the forms before you can launch into this kind of practice and
• The questions may well be mixes of wh- questions and closed questions so the reporting will include formulations such as     He asked you why you became a teacher and     She asked you if / whether you enjoy teaching

You can set up the task to exclude one or other type of question, of course, but that's a lot less natural.

Reporting verbs in English need careful handling and there are a number of issues:

• Grammatical / Colligational issues We saw above that these verbs vary considerably in the constructions they can appear in. When deciding on a set of reporting verbs to teach, therefore, it makes sense to focus on those which are colligates and share structural characteristics or we risk encouraging error rather than helping our learners to avoid it. The simplest way to start is to take common verbs which can be followed by that clauses (i.e., most of them) before getting into other complications. Even at higher levels, it makes sense to select sets of verbs which take the same structural forms in the following clauses.
• Attitudinal issues Above, we divided reporting verbs into three classes: tentative, neutral and assertive. While this is a rather crude categorisation (and the diagram was meant to alert you to the fact that there is a cline rather than a simple three-part division), it has some utility as far as classroom approaches are concerned because it provides a memorable hook on which to hang the verbs.
• Stylistic issues Some reporting verbs are rare and more formal in style or, sometimes, rarer and quite colloquial. We need, therefore, to alert learners to the stylistic differences between, e.g.:     She enquired how he felt and     She asked how he was because learners need these kinds of data to be able to use the words naturally. We also need to remember the distinction between bridge and non-bridge verbs and the effect of dropping or including that .

Click here for the test .

References: Chalker, S, 1987, Current English Grammar , London: Macmillan Harman, I P, 1989, Teaching indirect speech: deixis points the way, English Language Teaching Journal, Volume 44, No 3, pp230-238, Oxford: Oxford University Press

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The Reported Speech

Table of Contents

What is reported speech.

Reported speech is when you tell somebody what you or another person said before. When reporting a speech, some changes are necessary.

For example, the statement:

• Jane said she was waiting for her mom .

is a reported speech, whereas:

• Jane said, “I’m waiting for my mom.”

is a direct speech.

Reported speech is also referred to as indirect speech or indirect discourse .

Before explaining how to report a discourse, let us first distinguish between direct speech and reported speech .

Direct speech vs reported speech

1. We use direct speech to quote a speaker’s exact words. We put their words within quotation marks. We add a reporting verb such as “he said” or “she asked” before or after the quote.

• He said, “I am happy.”

2. Reported speech is a way of reporting what someone said without using quotation marks. We do not necessarily report the speaker”‘s exact words. Some changes are necessary: the time expressions, the tense of the verbs, and the demonstratives.

• He said that he was happy.

More examples:

Different types of reported speech

When you use reported speech, you either report:

• Requests/commands
• Other types

A. Reporting statements

When transforming statements, check whether you have to change:

• place and time expression

1- Pronouns

In reported speech, you often have to change the pronoun depending on who says what.

She says, “My dad likes roast chicken.” => She says that her dad likes roast chicken.

• If the sentence starts in the present, there is no backshift of tenses in reported speech.
• If the sentence starts in the past, there is often a backshift of tenses in reported speech.

No backshift

Do not change the tense if the introductory clause (i.e., the reporting verb) is in the present tense (e. g. He says ). Note, however, that you might have to change the form of the present tense verb (3rd person singular).

• He says, “I write poems.” => He says that he writes English.

You must change the tense if the introductory clause (i.e., the reporting verb) is in the past tense (e. g. He said ).

• He said, “I am happy.”=> He said that he was happy.

Examples of the main changes in verb tense :

3. Modal verbs

The modal verbs could, should, would, might, needn’t, ought to, and used to do not normally change.

• He said: “She might be right.” => He said that she might be right.
• He told her: “You needn’t see a doctor.” => He told her that she needn’t see a doctor.

Other modal verbs such as can, shall, will, must, and ma y change:

4- Place, demonstratives, and time expressions

Place, demonstratives, and time expressions change if the context of the reported statement (i.e. the location and/or the period of time) is different from that of the direct speech.

In the following table, you will find the different changes of place; demonstratives, and time expressions.

B. Reporting Questions

When transforming questions, check whether you have to change:

• The pronouns
• The place and time expressions
• The tenses (backshift)

Also, note that you have to:

• transform the question into an indirect question
• use the question word ( where, when, what, how ) or if / whether

>> EXERCISE ON REPORTING QUESTIONS <<

C. Reporting requests/commands

When transforming requests and commands, check whether you have to change:

• place and time expressions
• She said, “Sit down.” – She asked me to sit down.
• She said, “don’t be lazy” – She asked me not to be lazy

D. Other transformations

• Expressions of advice with must , should, and ought are usually reported using advise / urge . Example: “You must read this book.” He advised/urged me to read that book.
• The expression let’s is usually reported using suggest . In this case, there are two possibilities for reported speech: gerund or statement with should . Example : “Let’s go to the cinema.” 1. He suggested going to the cinema. 2. He suggested that we should go to the cinema.

Main clauses connected with and/but

If two complete main clauses are connected with and or but , put that after the conjunction.

• He said, “I saw her but she didn’t see me.=> He said that he had seen her but that she hadn’t seen him.

If the subject is dropped in the second main clause (the conjunction is followed by a verb), do not use that .

• She said, “I am a nurse and work in a hospital.=> He said that she was a nurse and worked in a hospital.

punctuation rules of the reported speech

Direct speech:

We normally add a comma between the reporting verbs (e.g., she/he said, reported, he replied, etc.) and the reported clause in direct speech. The original speaker”s words are put between inverted commas, either single (“…”) or double (“…”).

• She said, “I wasn’t ready for the competition”.

Note that we insert the comma within the inverted commas if the reported clause comes first:

• “I wasn’t ready for the competition,” she said.

Indirect speech:

In indirect speech, we don’t put a comma between the reporting verb and the reported clause and we omit the inverted quotes.

• She said that she hadn’t been ready for the competition.

In reported questions and exclamations, we remove the question mark and the exclamation mark.

• She asked him why he looked sad?
• She asked him why he looked sad.

Can we omit that in the reported speech?

Yes, we can omit that after reporting verbs such as he said , he replied , she suggested , etc.

• He said that he could do it. – He said he could do it.
• She replied that she was fed up with his misbehavior. – She replied she was fed up with his misbehavior.

List of reporting verbs

Reported speech requires a reporting verb such as “he said”, she “replied”, etc.

Here is a list of some common reporting verbs:

• Cry (meaning shout)
• Demonstrate
• Hypothesize
• Posit the view that
• Question the view that
• Want to know

In reported speech, we put the words of a speaker in a subordinate clause introduced by a reporting verb such as – “ he said ” and “ she asked “- with the required person and tense adjustments.

Related pages

• Reported speech exercise (mixed)
• Reported speech exercise (questions)
• Reported speech exercise (requests and commands)
• Reported speech lesson

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Verbs and tenses

• 1 Verbs and tenses
• 2 Lesson Share: Reported speech 1 – article
• 3 Past perfect aspect – article
• 4 Past perfect aspect – tips and activities
• 5 Present perfect aspect – article
• 6 Present perfect aspect – tips and activities
• 7 Reported speech – tips and activities
• 8 Reported speech 2 – article
• 9 The passive in English – article
• 10 The passive in English – tips and activities
• 11 Modal verbs 1 – article
• 12 Modal verbs 1 – tips and activities
• 13 Modal verbs 2 – article
• 14 Modal verbs 2 – tips and activities

Lesson Share: Reported speech 1 – article

By Kerry G. Maxwell and Lindsay Clandfield

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An article by Kerry Maxwell and Lindsay Clandfield on approaches to teaching reported speech.

Introduction

In English, there are two ways of telling someone what someone else has said. Often we may choose to repeat their actual words using a quote structure or quotation, e.g.

‘Are you going to invite your father?’ Joe asked.

However, when the information that someone conveys is more important than their actual words, we may want to explain what they have said using our own words, e.g.

Examples like these are sometimes referred to as indirect speech or reported speech. Sentences in reported speech contain a reporting clause with a reporting verb like say or ask , e.g.

This is followed by a reported clause showing someone’s original statement, question or thought, e.g.

… (that) she was getting married on Saturday.

Reporting statements and thoughts

If we want to report a statement or someone’s thoughts, we use a reported clause which usually begins with the conjunction that , e.g.

However, in informal speech and writing, that is often left out, especially with the most frequently used reporting verbs such as say and think , e.g.

The conjunction that is less likely to be left out with less common reporting verbs, especially those which have a more specific meaning than say or think , such as complain, explain, admit, agree , e.g.

Sometimes reporting verbs are followed by a direct object which refers to the ‘hearer’, i.e: the person who the speech was originally directed towards, e.g.

With some reporting verbs, it is possible to choose whether or not to mention the hearer, e.g

With certain reporting verbs, if we decide to mention the hearer, we must do so with a prepositional phrase, e.g.

He agreed (with Jenny) that it would have been better to wait. 

Reporting questions

Questions put into report structures are often referred to as reported questions or indirect questions, though they are not followed by question marks. The following are two examples of questions being put into report structures:

'Where do you live? He asked me where I lived.

The most common verb used for reporting questions is ask , though verbs such as inquire/enquire are sometimes used to report questions in a more formal way.

Reporting yes/no questions

Some types of question can be answered with simply yes or no. These types of questions are therefore often referred to as yes/no questions, e.g.

To report a yes/no question, we use whether or if   in the reported clause, e.g.

If  is generally used when the speaker has suggested one possibility that might be true, e.g.

Whether is generally used when the speaker has suggested one or more possibilities, e.g.

I asked her whether she’d prefer to eat out or cook a meal at home.

Reporting wh- questions

Wh-questions cannot be answered by yes or no. They are questions in which someone asks for information about an event or situation, e.g.

• What time is he coming?
• Who were you talking to?
• Where did you put my car keys?

To report a wh-question, we use a wh-word at the beginning of the reported clause, e.g.

When the details of the reported question are clear from the context, it is sometimes possible to leave out everything except the wh-word, especially in spoken English, e.g.

If the original wh-question consists of what, which or who followed by be + noun complement , the complement is often placed before be in the reported clause, e.g.

Tense choice and meaning in the reporting clause

Since reported speech is most commonly used to report something that was said or thought in the past, the reporting verb is usually in the past tense, e.g.

However, there are certain situations in which a reporting verb in the present tense is used, these include:

a) When we are uncertain as to whether the information we are reporting is true, e.g.

b) When we want to make a general report about what many people say, e.g.

In certain cases, either a past or a present reporting verb is possible, although a present tense is used when we want to show that something is still true or relevant at the moment we are reporting it, often suggesting that the original words were only spoken a short time ago, compare, e.g.

Note that if the reporting verb is in the present tense, the tense in the reported clause remains unchanged, e.g.

'I don’t feel well.' Tom says he doesn’t feel well. 

Tense choice in the reported clause

When the situation described in the reported clause is already in the past at the time we are reporting it, we always use a past tense, such as the past simple or the past continuous, in the reported clause.

When the situation described in the reported clause was already in the past when the speaker originally talked about it, then we often use the past perfect in the reported clause, e.g.

If we want to emphasise that a situation still exists or is still relevant at the time we are using reported speech, we can use a present or present perfect tense in the reported clause, e.g.

If we want to show that we are uncertain as to whether the statement we are reporting is true, then we are more likely to use a past tense in the reported clause, compare:

In the second example, the use of the past tense in the reported clause suggests that the speaker is more uncertain as to whether what the forecast said is correct.

A summary of the form of tense changes in reported speech

We can summarise the form of tense changes from direct speech to reported speech as follows:

1 . Present tense in direct speech usually becomes past tense in the reported clause:

'I feel sick.' Kate said she felt sick. 'We’re moving house. ' She told me they were moving house. 'It’s David’s fault.' He claimed that it was David’s fault.

Note, however, that we can use the present tense in the reported clause if the reporting verb is in the present tense, compare:

'It’s David fault.' He claims that it’s David’s fault.

And the present tense is sometimes used in a reported clause to show that the situation reported is still relevant at the present time:

'I feel hungry.' Tom said he feels hungry, so let’s go and eat.

2. Present perfect in direct speech usually becomes past perfect in reported clause:

Note, however, that we can use the present perfect in the reported clause if the reporting verb is in the present tense, or if we want to show that the situation reported on is still relevant at the present time, e.g.

She said that she’s finished, but I don’t think she has.

3. Past tense in direct speech often becomes past perfect in the reported clause:

Note, however, that a simple past tense in direct speech can also remain unchanged in the reported clause, especially when it refers to a completed action, e.g.

Modal verbs and reported speech

Will often becomes would , e.g.

Will can sometimes remain unchanged if the situation reported is in the future or still relevant, e.g.

Can often becomes could , e.g.

Can sometimes also remains unchanged, especially if the verb in the reporting clause is in the present tense, e.g.

May often becomes might , e.g.

Must , when expressing necessity, can become had to , e.g.

Would, could, should, might, ought to and used to do not change in reported speech, e.g.

• British English
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Past perfect aspect – article

Past perfect aspect – tips and activities

Present perfect aspect – article, present perfect aspect – tips and activities.

Reported speech – tips and activities

Reported speech 2 – article, the passive in english – article, the passive in english – tips and activities, modal verbs 1 – article, modal verbs 1 – tips and activities, modal verbs 2 – article, modal verbs 2 – tips and activities, related articles.

Tips and ideas from Kerry Maxwell and Lindsay Clandfield on teaching reported speech.

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• Reported Speech /

Direct Speech Vs Reported Speech: Differences, Rules, Examples, and Exercises

• Updated on  
• Jan 9, 2024

For effective communication , the students need to learn the difference between the two types of speech. Direct speech adds authenticity and captures the speaker’s tone or emotions. On the other hand, reported speech is used to report the content of the speech in a more generalized or summarized manner. 

Direct Speech is often involved in writing literature, storytelling, and news reporting. The primary purpose of direct speech is to add an immediate impact and create a vivid impression of the speaker’s words. In contrast, Reported Speech is found in academic writing, official reports, and formal contexts.

In this blog post, you will learn about direct and reported speech and practical exercises to master the concept of direct and reported speech.

Explore Now Test Your English Proficiency with this Editing Quiz!

Important Differences Between Direct And Reported Speech

The table below represents the important differences between direct and reported speech that will help you to understand the structure of speech in a better way:

Must Read: Subject-Verb Agreement: Definition, 12 Rules & Examples

Rules For Changing Direct Speech to Reported Speech

The below table highlights the rules from changing direct speech to the reported speech for a better understanding of the concept.

Also Read: Tenses Rules: Charts, Examples, Types [PDF Available]

Examples of Direct Speech vs. Reported Speech

Some of the examples of direct and indirect speech are given below:

Exercises of Direct Speech vs. Reported Speech

Change the following sentences to indirect speech:

• “I am going to the store,” she said.
• “We have completed the project,” they announced.
• “He plays the guitar very well,” she commented.
• “I can’t believe you did that!” he exclaimed.
• “It’s my birthday tomorrow,” she informed us.
• “Please turn off the lights,” he requested.
• “I will help you with your homework,” she promised.
• “They won the competition,” he revealed.
• “Do you want some coffee?” she asked.
• “I have never been to Paris,” he admitted.

Match the answers with the following sentences:

• She said that she was going to the store.
• They announced that they had completed the project.
• She commented that he played the guitar very well.
• He exclaimed that he couldn’t believe I had done that.
• She informed us that it was her birthday the next day.
• He requested us to turn off the lights.
• She promised to help me with my homework.
• He revealed that they had won the competition.
• She asked if I wanted some coffee.
• He admitted that he had never been to Paris.

What is the difference between Direct and Indirect Speech?

Direct Speech represents the exact words of the speaker whereas reported speech refers to the idea behind to what the speaker said instead of using the exact words of the speaker.

What are the four types of reported speech?

The four types of reported speech are Assertive, Interrogative, Exclamatory, and Imperative.

What is the example of Direct and Indirect Speech?

An example of direct and indirect speech is 

Sita said,” I have done my work”.

Sita said that she had done her work.

To advance your grammar knowledge and read more informative blogs, check out our Learn English page, and don’t forget to follow Leverage Edu .

Amanpreet Kaur

📚✨ From Classroom Chats Entered Into The Wordy World ….. Yes , If you all Remember that teacher who kept you on your toes with pop quizzes and endless homework? YEP! THAT WAS Me ! 🌟 But with the blessings of almighty and the key motivation of my husband who came across the spark of writing in me has insisted me to pave my way away from chalk dust to creative burst!💫  Being in this new world of writing I can compose pun-tastic content, poetry full of emotions and humorous articles that can even make Shakespeare envious of me 📝🎭.Yippee! from teaching young minds to educating worldwide readers it's an epic career switch. From teaching grammar lessons to grammatically flawless copy, I'm todays' wordsmith on a mission! Let me spin literary magic all around and conquer my exact destination of proving myself as The Best Writer in The World.🚀🏆 My promise is to provide you with valuable insights, solutions to your questions, and a momentary escape from the routine. I believe in the power of words to create connections, provoke thought, and foster growth. Woods are lovely dark and deep  But I have promises to keep and  Miles to go before I sleep ……..🌳✨🌌

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Reported Speech: Important Grammar Rules and Examples

Reported speech is a very common thing in the English language. We do it almost every day, in conversation and in writing. The problem is, sometimes there can be some confusion around the topic. So today we’ll take a look at reported speech: what it is, how to use it, and we’ll give some interactive exercises of reported speech too, so you can see how it looks in everyday conversations or writing.

Table of Contents

Reported Speech

When we use reported speech, we are referring to something that was said either by ourselves or by someone else in the past. An example of this might be ‘he said that he was going shopping. This type of speech is used very frequently during both spoken and written examples of English and it is an important part of the language which any English student will find useful to learn. In this section, we are going to look at types of reported speech as well as how we can use it.

What is Reported Speech?

Reported speech is simply when we tell somebody what someone else said. You can do this in your writing, or in speech. Reported speech is very different from direct speech , which is when you show what somebody said  in the exact way that they said it . In reported speech though, you do not need to quote somebody directly.

Instead, we use a reporting verb, such as ‘say’ or ‘ask’. These reporting verbs are used to report the speech to someone else. There are many different reporting verbs that can be used, and we’ll try to use different ones throughout this article to show you some examples, but you can always do some research too if you want to learn more examples for yourself.

In short, reported speech is the linguistic technique that we use to tell somebody what someone else’s  direct speech  was. In reported speech though, you may need to make certain changes to the grammar to make the sentence make sense. So, we’ll look at some grammar change examples below and highlight what needs to be changed.

Reported Speech Examples

When we use reported speech, we are usually talking  about the past (because obviously, the person who spoke originally spoke in the past). The verbs therefore usually have to be in the past too.

For example :

• Direct speech: I’ve lost my umbrella .
• Reported speech: He said (that) he had lost his umbrella.

Reported Speech Rules

When changing from direct to indirect speech, you need to change the grammar in certain ways. In this section, we are going to be looking a little more closely at direct and indirect speech and how they are used. 

Verb Tense Changes in Reported Speech

If the reporting verb is in the present tense, then very little needs to be done to the direct speech sentence to change it. Here’s an example.

• Direct speech:  I like dogs.
• Reported speech:  She  says  she likes dogs.

Here nothing really needed to be changed except the pronoun, because you are now talking about somebody else, so ‘I’ becomes ‘She’ or ‘He’. The tense is still the same because ‘says’ is the present tense version of the reporting verb. But what happens if the sentence needs to be changed to past tense?

Sometimes it is necessary to change the reporting verb into the past tense if what was said is no longer relevant, or was said sometime in the past. Here are the changes that would need to be made.

• Reported speech:  She  said  she  liked  dogs.

As well as changing the pronouns here, we’ve had to change the tense of both the reporting verb and the verb. So, ‘says’ becomes ‘said’ and ‘like’ becomes ‘liked’.

When the reporting verb is in the past tense, verb tense forms usually need to change. The tenses generally move backward in this way:

• Present Simple Tense into Past Simple Tense
• Present Continuous Tense into Past Continuous Tense
• Present Perfect Tense into Past Perfect Tense
• Past Simple Tense into Past Perfect Tense
• Past Continuous Tense into Past Perfect Continuous Tense
• Past Perfect Tense (the tense remains unchanged)

If somebody is talking about what will happen in the future then, again, you will need to change the tense of the reporting verb.

• Direct speech:  I shall leave in a moment.
• Reported speech:  She said that she would leave in a moment.

Notice how ‘shall’ and “will” become ‘would’ here in order for it to make sense.

• Will into Would
• Will be into Would be
• Will have into Would have
• Will have been into Would have been

Modal verbs actually have a very interesting relationship with reported speech, so we’ll look at that below too.

Modal Verbs and Reported Speech

We’ve already covered modal verbs in another article, but it’s interesting to see how they are changed in reported speech.

• Can into Could
• Could (The verb remains unchanged)
• Have to into Had to
• Must into Must/Had to
• May into Might
• Might (The verb remains unchanged)
• Should (The verb remains unchanged)

Let’s take a look at some examples.

• Direct speech:  Will I see you later?
• Reported speech:  He asked if he  would  see me later.

In the direct speech example you can see the modal verb ‘will’ being used to ask a question. Notice how in reported speech the modal verb ‘will’ and the reporting verb ‘ask’ are both written in the past tense. So, ‘will’ becomes ‘would’ and ‘ask’ becomes ‘asked’. It’s important in reported speech to make sure that each part of the sentence is in the same tense.

Sometimes though, modal verbs do not need to change tense because they already read correctly. Here’s an example.

• Direct speech:  I should go to the park.
• Reported speech:  He told me he  should  go to the park.

Notice that nothing needed to be changed here to fit the past tense reporting verb ‘told’. ‘Should’ does not need to be changed grammatically for either sentence to make sense. But you will notice that because we decided to use the reporting verb ‘told’ instead of ‘said’, we had to include the pronoun ‘me’ for it to make sense.

• Reported speech:  He told  me  he should go to the park.
• Reported speech:  He said he should go to the park.

Both of these sentences make grammatical sense, because we added the pronoun ‘me’ after ‘told’ in the first sentence, but we didn’t after ‘said’ in the second one. Here is the  incorrect  versions so you can see why it doesn’t work grammatically:

• Incorrect reported speech:  He told he should go to the park.
• Incorrect reported speech:  He said me he should go to the park.

In order to make the top one make sense, we need to add ‘me’ like we did in the correct examples above. In order to make the second one make sense, we would either have to remove ‘me’ like we did in the correct one above,  or  we would have to add  another  word. So that it looked like this.

• Reported speech:  He said  to  me he should go to the park.

The above sentence makes sense, but sometimes you have to watch your wording of certain things to make sure that you aren’t over-speaking/writing. This can be a problem if you are trying to get your point across quickly. You should always choose the option that is quickest to say/write because it sounds/looks better and you run less risk of making a grammatical mistake.

This guide could not possibly be extensive, because there are many grammar rules that need to be followed when reporting speech, but they vary wildly. The take-home message should really be that when reporting speech, it is important to think carefully about what you are going to say or write, so you know it makes sense. Hopefully, this guide served as a good starting point though, so you can identify reported speech now, and start to think about which grammar rules are applied.

Direct and Indirect Speech

Changes in time and place in reported speech.

Time and place references often have to change in Indirect Speech

• Now –> Then
• Today –> That day
• Here –> There
• This –> That
• Tomorrow –> The following day/ The next day/ The day after
• Next week –> The following week/ The next week/ The week after
• Yesterday –> The previous day/ The day before
• Last week –> The previous week/ The week before
• Ago –> Previously/ Before
• Tonight –> That night

No Change in Verb Tenses in Reported Speech

There is no change in verb tenses in Indirect Speech when:

• The introductory verb is in the Present, Present Perfect or Future .
• If the reported sentence deals with a fact or general truth .
• The reported sentence contains a time clause .
• The verb of the sentence is in the unreal past (the second or the third conditional ).
• The subjunctive stays unchanged in the subordinate clause .
• Had better , could , would , used to , should , might , ought to and mustn’t remain unchanged.
• If the speaker reports something immediately or soon after it was said .

Reporting Verbs in Indirect Speech

List of reporting verbs in reported speech.

• Tell, say, ask.
• Verb + that + clause : complain, deny, explain, exclaim, remark, promise, boast, inform somebody, claim, agree, suggest.
• Verb + to + infinitive : agree, offer, refuse, demand, threaten, promise, claim.
• Verb + indirect object + to + infinitive : advise, allow, beg, command, encourage, forbid, invite, want, instruct, permit, urge, order, remind, warn.
• Verb + “ing” form : admit (to), accuse somebody of, apologize for, boast about/ of, complain to somebody of, deny, insist on, suggest.
• Verb + how : explain to somebody.

Reported Questions in English

When you are changing a question from direct speech into indirect speech, you follow the same kinds of rules as for statements.

To report a question , we use verbs such as inquire, wonder, want to know, ask…

Reported Commands and Requests in English

Reported Orders, Commands, and Requests are formed using the to-infinitive and not to-infinitive.

The reporting verbs for the orders/ commands/ requests are order, shout, demand, warn, beg, command, tell, insist, beseech , threaten, implore, ask, propose, forbid…

When we change from direct to indirect speech, the pronoun and tense changes are also needed.

Reported Speech Video

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75 thoughts on “Reported Speech: Important Grammar Rules and Examples”

Nathy is not bad you are

when the war (begin)we(live)in london

Good evening. I am proud for the job done on reported speech. My endless thanks to the author of this task.

Turn Reported speech

Vivek :I have forgotten my pen. Rina: I have two pens. I will give you one.

John said, “I have read this book.”

John said that he had read (this) book. (* holding the same book while speaking)

In this case, this doesn’t change to that.

Please comment. Thanks.

You are correct. In this case, the word “this” does not change to “that” when reporting the statement. This is because “this” refers to a specific book that John is holding while speaking, so it remains the same when reporting the statement. If John had been referring to a book that was not present, then “this” would change to “that” when reporting the statement.

Very nicely explained…….Thank you

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Reported speech

Reported speech , very simply, is speech that is reported: a writer attempts to express a speaker's ideas on paper. It is, in other words, a representation in writing of something that has been spoken or thought (at times when we report on a book we have read, our account even of written language may take the form of reported speech.) There are two ways of reporting speech, of which (the second) is sometimes described as reported speech ; but this seems a loose usage when there is a more accurate one available.

• In Direct Speech , the writer, or reporter, writes the exact words used by the speaker, along with such reporting clauses as "he said,". Its status as direct speech is signalled by being enclosed in inverted commas (; speech marks ). Within those speech marks, there are often other punctuation marks which serve to indicate the speaker's tone, such as the question mark ( ? ), exclamation mark ( ! ), or 'dash of interruption' ( -- ). Apart from the difficulties of accurate transcription, this is the less complicated option for writing down what has been said. By and large, speech reported in the direct manner is more usual in fiction, and occasionally in newspapers, than in academic writing. If you do want to use direct speech , you may like to see our article on punctuation of direct speech .)

In academic life, however, the less complicated option is not always the favoured one. You are advised to try to use the alternative, indirect speech (sometimes loosely, and inaccurately, called 'reported speech'), in academic writing.

• indirect statements ,
• indirect questions or
• indirect commands .
• Grammar concepts
• Academic writing
• Punctuation

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Reported Speech in English

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Reported speech is an important aspect of the English language. We use it to let others know what someone has said or written. In this reference, we will discuss what reported speech is, see a few examples of reported speech as well as learn its rules and grammar.

What is reported speech?

Reported speech, also known as indirect speech, helps us convey what someone has said or written. As the term suggests, we use it to report what someone else said in the past, without using their exact words. Reported speech is used in many different contexts, such as in news articles, conversations, and even academic writing.

Why is reported speech important in English?

Reported speech is important in English because it allows us to accurately convey what someone else has said or written. It is also important in academic writing, where we need to report the words of other authors. Reported speech allows us to summarize what someone else has said, without using their exact words.

Examples of reported speech

Here are some examples of reported speech:

• "I'm going to the store," she said. (direct speech)
• She told me that she was going to the store. (reported speech)
• "I love pizza," he said. (direct speech)
• He said that he loved pizza. (reported speech)
• "Can you help me with this?" she asked. (direct speech)
• She asked if you could help her with that. (reported speech)
• "Don't forget to call me," he said. (direct speech)
• He reminded you not to forget to call him. (reported speech)

Reported speech rules and grammar

Reported speech has fairly straightforward rules, once you understand what it looks like, you'll easily use them yourself.

• Reported speech always uses a reporting verb, such as "said," "asked," "told," or "reminded."
• The tense in reported speech usually changes from the original tense. For example, "I am going" becomes "she said that she was going."
• Pronouns may change in reported speech, depending on who is speaking and who is being spoken to.
• Reported speech may use modal verbs , such as "could," "should," or "would."
• Punctuation is important in reported speech, especially when using quotation marks. Commas and periods should be placed inside the quotation marks.

Types of reported speech - statements, questions, and commands

There are three types of reported speech: statements, questions, and commands. Each type has its own set of rules and grammar.

Statements are the most common type of reported speech. They are used to report what someone has said in the past. Here are some examples:

• Direct speech : "I'm tired," she said.
• Reported speech : She said that she was tired.

Questions are also commonly reported. They are used to report a question that someone has asked in the past. Here are some examples:

• Direct speech : "What time is it?" he asked.
• Reported speech : He asked what time it was.

Commands are reported less frequently, but they are still important. They are used to report a command that someone has given in the past. Here are some examples:

• Direct speech : "Don't forget to lock the door," she said.
• Reported speech : She reminded us not to forget to lock the door.

Differences between direct and indirect speech

Direct speech and indirect speech are different in several ways. Direct speech helps us relay the exact words that someone has said. Indirect speech is when we report what someone has said, without using their exact words. Differences between direct and indirect speech:

• Direct speech uses quotation marks to indicate the exact words that were spoken. Indirect speech does not use quotation marks.
• Direct speech uses the present tense , past tense , or future tense , depending on when the words were spoken. Indirect speech usually uses the past tense.
• Direct speech uses the speaker's exact words, including any mistakes or errors. Indirect speech does not include mistakes or errors.

Reported speech vs. direct speech

Reported speech and direct speech are both used to report what someone has said or written. However, there are some differences between them. Direct speech uses the exact words of the speaker, while reported speech summarizes what the speaker said. 

Here are some examples:

• Direct speech : "I'm going to the store," she said.
• Reported speech : She said that she was going to the store.
• Direct speech : "Can you help me with this?" she asked.
• Reported speech : She asked if you could help her with that.

Common mistakes in reported speech

Reported speech can be tricky, and there are some common mistakes that people make. Common mistakes in reported speech:

• Forgetting to change the tense of the verb .
• Forgetting to use a reporting verb.
• Using the wrong reporting verb.
• Not changing pronouns when necessary.
• Not using quotation marks correctly.

Reported speech allows us to accurately convey what someone else has said or written. By following the rules and grammar of reported speech, you can effectively report on what others said with the help of quotation marks and rules explained earlier in this reference.

If you want to learn more about reported speech and improve your English skills, check out some handy references below!

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Reported Speech

Perfect english grammar.

Reported Statements

Here's how it works:

We use a 'reporting verb' like 'say' or 'tell'. ( Click here for more about using 'say' and 'tell' .) If this verb is in the present tense, it's easy. We just put 'she says' and then the sentence:

• Direct speech: I like ice cream.
• Reported speech: She says (that) she likes ice cream.

We don't need to change the tense, though probably we do need to change the 'person' from 'I' to 'she', for example. We also may need to change words like 'my' and 'your'. (As I'm sure you know, often, we can choose if we want to use 'that' or not in English. I've put it in brackets () to show that it's optional. It's exactly the same if you use 'that' or if you don't use 'that'.)

But , if the reporting verb is in the past tense, then usually we change the tenses in the reported speech:

• Reported speech: She said (that) she liked ice cream.

* doesn't change.

• Direct speech: The sky is blue.
• Reported speech: She said (that) the sky is/was blue.

Click here for a mixed tense exercise about practise reported statements. Click here for a list of all the reported speech exercises.

Reported Questions

So now you have no problem with making reported speech from positive and negative sentences. But how about questions?

• Direct speech: Where do you live?
• Reported speech: She asked me where I lived.
• Direct speech: Where is Julie?
• Reported speech: She asked me where Julie was.
• Direct speech: Do you like chocolate?
• Reported speech: She asked me if I liked chocolate.

Click here to practise reported 'wh' questions. Click here to practise reported 'yes / no' questions. Reported Requests

There's more! What if someone asks you to do something (in a polite way)? For example:

• Direct speech: Close the window, please
• Or: Could you close the window please?
• Or: Would you mind closing the window please?
• Reported speech: She asked me to close the window.
• Direct speech: Please don't be late.
• Reported speech: She asked us not to be late.

Reported Orders

• Direct speech: Sit down!
• Reported speech: She told me to sit down.
• Click here for an exercise to practise reported requests and orders.
• Click here for an exercise about using 'say' and 'tell'.
• Click here for a list of all the reported speech exercises.

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Scholarly Voice: Active and Passive Voice

Active and passive voice.

Active voice and passive voice are grammatical constructions that communicate certain information about an action. Specifically, APA explains that voice shows relationships between the verb and the subject and/or object (see APA 7, Section 4.13). Writers need to be intentional about voice in order to ensure clarity. Using active voice often improves clarity, while passive voice can help avoid unnecessary repetition.  

Active voice can help ensure clarity by making it clear to the reader who is taking action in the sentence. In addition, the active voice stresses that the actor (or grammatical subject) precedes the verb, again, putting emphasis on the subject. Passive voice construction leaves out the actor (subject) and focuses on the relationship between the verb and object.

The order of words in a sentence with active voice is subject, verb, object.

• Active voice example : I conducted a study of elementary school teachers.
• This sentence structure puts the emphasis of the sentence on the subject, clarifying who conducted the study. 
• Passive voice example : A study was conducted of elementary school teachers.
• In this sentence, it is not clear who conducted this study. 

Generally, in scholarly writing, with its emphasis on precision and clarity, the active voice is preferred. However, the passive voice is acceptable in some instances, for example:

• if the reader is aware of who the actor is;
• in expository writing, where the goal of the discussion is to provide background, context, or an in-depth explanation;
• if the writer wants to focus on the object or the implications of the actor’s action; or
• to vary sentence structure.  

Also, much like for anthropomorphism , different writing styles have different preferences. So, though you may see the passive voice used heavily in articles that you read for your courses and study, it does not mean that APA style advocates the same usage.

Examples of Writing in the Active Voice

Here are some examples of scholarly writing in the active voice:

• This is active voice because the subject in the sentence precedes the verb, clearly indicating who (I) will take the action (present).

Example : Teachers conducted a pilot study addressing the validity of the TAKS exam.

• Similarly, teachers (subject) clearly took the action (conducted) in this sentence.

Recognizing the Passive Voice

According to APA, writers should select verb tenses and voice carefully. Consider these examples to help determine which form of the verb is most appropriate:

Example : A study was conducted of job satisfaction and turnover.

• Here, it is not clear who did the conducting. In this case, if the context of the paragraph does not clarify who did the action, the writer should revise this sentence to clarify who conducted the study. 

Example : I conducted a study of job satisfaction and turnover.

• This revised sentence clearly indicates the action taker. Using “I” to identify the writer’s role in the research process is often a solution to the passive voice and is encouraged by APA style (see APA 7, Section 4.16).

Using the past tense of the verb “to be” and the past participle of a verb together is often an indication of the passive voice. Here are some signs to look for in your paper:

• Example : This study was conducted.
• Example : Findings were distributed.

Another indication of passive voice is when the verb precedes the actor in the sentence. Even if the action taker is clearly identified in a passive voice construction, the sentence is usually wordier. Making the actor the grammatical subject that comes before the verb helps to streamline the sentence.

• Issue : Though the verb and the actor (action taker) are clearly identified here, to improve clarity and word economy, the writer could place that actor, Rogers, before the verb.
• More concise active voice revision : Rogers (2016) conducted a study on nursing and turnover.  
• Issue : Here, the actor follows the verb, which reduces emphasis and clarity.
• This revised sentence is in the active voice and makes the actor the subject of the sentence.

Intentional Use of the Passive Voice

Sometimes, even in scholarly writing, the passive voice may be used intentionally and strategically. A writer may intentionally include the subject later in the sentence so as to reduce the emphasis and/or importance of the subject in the sentence. See the following examples of intentional passive voice to indicate emphasis:

Example : Schools not meeting AYP for 2 consecutive years will be placed on a “needs improvement” list by the State’s Department of Education.

• Here, all actors taking actions are identified, but this is in the passive voice as the State’s Department of Education is the actor doing the placing, but this verb precedes the actor. This may be an intentional use of the passive voice, to highlight schools not meeting AYP.
• To write this in the active voice, it would be phrased: “The State’s Department of Education will place schools not meeting AYP for 2 consecutive years on a “needs improvement” list. This sentence places the focus on the State’s Department of Education, not the schools.

Example : Participants in the study were incentivized with a $5 coffee gift card, which I gave them upon completion of their interview.

• As the writer and researcher, I may want to vary my sentence structure in order to avoid beginning several sentences with “I provided…” This example is written in the passive voice, but the meaning is clear.

Using Passive Voice in Scholarly Writing

As noted before, passive voice is allowed in APA style and can be quite appropriate, especially when writing about methods and data collection. However, students often overuse the passive voice in their writing, which means their emphasis in the sentence is not on the action taker. Their writing is also at risk of being repetitive. Consider the following paragraph in which the passive voice is used in each sentence:

A survey was administered . Using a convenience sample, 68 teachers were invited to participate in the survey by emailing them an invitation. E-mail addresses of teachers who fit the requirements for participation were provided by the principal of the school . The teachers were e-mailed an information sheet and a consent form. Responses were collected from 45 teachers… As you can see, the reader has no idea who is performing these actions, which makes the research process unclear. This is at odds with the goal of the methods discussion, which is to be clear and succinct regarding the process of data collection and analysis.

However, if translated entirely to the active voice, clearly indicating the researcher’s role, “I” becomes redundant and repetitive, interrupting the flow of the paragraph:

In this study, I administered a survey. I created a convenience sample of 68 teachers. I invited them to participate in the survey by emailing them an invitation. I obtained e-mail addresses from the principal of the school… “I” is quite redundant here and repetitive for the reader.

The Walden Writing Center suggests that students use “I” in the first sentence of the paragraph . Then, as long as it is clear to the reader that the student (writer) is the actor in the remaining sentences, use the active and passive voices appropriately to achieve precision and clarity (where applicable):

In this study, I administered a survey using a convenience sample. Sixty-eight teachers were invited to participate in the survey. The principal of the school provided me with the e-mail addresses of teachers who fit the requirements for participation. I e-mailed the teachers an information sheet and a consent form. A total of 45 teachers responded …

The use of the passive voice is complicated and requires careful attention and skill. There are no hard-and-fast rules. Using these guidelines, however, should help writers be clearer and more engaging in their writing, as well as achieving the intended purposes.

Remember, use voice strategically. APA recommends the active voice for clarity. However, the passive voice may be used, with intention, to remove the emphasis on the subject and also as a method for varying sentence structure. So, generally write in the active voice, but consider some of the above examples and some uses of the passive voice that may be useful to implement in your writing. Just be sure that the reader is always aware of who is taking the action of the verb.

• For more practice, try our Clarifying the Actor module .

Related Resources

• Principles of Writing: Active and Passive Voice (blog post) APA Style Blog post.

Didn't find what you need? Email us at [email protected] .

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5.6: Quoted Speech versus Reported Speech

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• Don Bissonnette
• South Seattle Community College

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Quoted Speech versus Reported Speech

       Quoted speech is repeating the exact words that someone spoke or wrote.  When using quoted speech, a writer must use quotation marks to show that he/she is quoting exactly what another person said.  Quoted speech is rarely used by native speakers.   Reported speech is saying the same information as in quoted speech, but the speaker or writer uses his or her own words.   Reported speech is almost always used by native speakers of English.   Reported speech is VERY difficult for non-native speakers.  (Many native speakers also mix up reported speech with quoted speech.)  When using reported speech, the subjects of sentences, the verbs, the possessive adjectives, and locations change from those used in quoted speech.  I repeat: Reported speech can be VERY confusing for non-native speakers.

Quoted speech:   The man said, “I can’t come to your party.” Reported speech:   The man said that he couldn’t come to my party.

Quoted speech:   My mother always said to me, “I want you home at dinner time.” Reported speech:  My mother always said to me that she wanted me home at dinner time.

Quoted speech:   I asked the old woman, “Can I help you to carry your bags”? Reported speech:   I asked the old woman if I could help her with her bags.

Quoted Speech:  I told my two sons, “I have traveled around the world two times.” Reported speech:  I told my two sons that I had traveled around the world two times.

Quoted speech:   My wife said to my son, “You should have fixed the broken light on your car before you got the ticket.” Reported speech:   My wife said to my son that he should have changed the broken light on his car before he got a ticket.

Quoted speech:   I asked my sons, “Can you help me in my garden on Saturday”? Reported speech:   I asked my sons if they could help me in my garden on Saturday.

Quoted speech:  My sister says, “I want to win the lottery.” Reported speech:  My sister says that she wants to win the lottery.

Quoted speech:   My wife told the delivery person, “Put the boxes here.” Reported speech:   My wife told the delivery person to put the boxes there.

From the examples above, you should note that the verb tense of reported speech depends upon the verb that comes before it.  If the first verb is in the present tense, then the reported speech is also in the present tense.  However, if the first verb is in the past tense, then the reported speech is also in the past tense.  If the quoted speech is a present or future tense modal verb, then the reported speech is a past modal.  If the quoted speech is in the present perfect tense, then the reported speech is in the past perfect tense.   This is difficult to understand and use, both for native and non-native speakers and especially writers .

Also, note how pronouns and possessive adjectives change form.  I becomes he/she .  You becomes I/we .  My becomes his/her .  Our becomes their.  Your becomes our .

Here becomes there .  Now becomes then .  This and these become that and those .  Today becomes that day and tomorrow becomes the next day .

Simple yes/no questions change from the helping verbs to if .

With imperative sentences, use infinitives in reported speech. Example:  “Come to class on time.”  He told them to come to class on time.

Verb Forms Used in Reported Speech

Quoted Speech                                       Reported Speech

The student said, “I study hard.”               He said *that he studied hard. The student says, “I study hard.”               He says *that he studies hard. He said, “I am studying hard.”                   He said *that he was studying hard. He said, “I will study hard.”                       He said *that he would study hard. He said, “I am going to study hard.”           He said *that he was going to study hard. He says, “I am going to study hard.”          He says *that he is going to study hard. He said, “I can study hard.”                       He said *that he could study hard. He said, “I have studied hard.”                  He said *that he had studied hard. He says, “I have studied hard.”                  He says *that he has studied hard. He said, “I had studied hard.”                    He said *that he had studied hard. He told them, “Do your homework.”           He told them to do their homework.

       *The word “that” is optional in the reported speech sentences.  In fact, native speakers usually do not say the “that.”  It is understood to be there by native speakers, however.  Common verbs used for reporting words are as follows:  say, tell, ask, inquire, respond, answer, reply, state, comment, report, complain, announce, explain, remark, note .  There are doubtlessly other reported-speech words.  In reported speech, these verbs are almost always used in the past tense.

Exercise 26:  Change quoted speech to reported speech in the following sentences, please. 

Examples: 

“I need to buy a new computer.”   He said he needed to buy a new computer. “We have been working for two days on the project.”   He noted that they had been working for two days on the project.

1.  Alex said, “I will be home in August.”

2.  My sister asked, “Will your son be home in August”?

3.  I said to my neighbor, “I love to work in my garden.”

4.  The housewife said to her husband, “We have to fix the broken window.”

5.  “Boys make a lot of noise,” said the tired mother.

6.  The boy said to his grandmother, “I love you.”

7.  The policeman asked the driver, “Do you have a driver’s license”?

8.  The teacher told the students, “Bring your books to class tomorrow.”

9.  The man said, “The boys are playing soccer.”

10.  The woman said to her husband, “A plane just flew by at a very low altitude.”

11.  “The teacher said, “You will eventually learn English.”

Exercise 27:  Same as above, please.

1.  The man responded to me, “I’ll see you later on tonight.”

2.  I advised the children “Don’t play near the street.”

3.  The man complained to the restaurant manager, “Please make sure the plates are clean the next time I come here.”

4.  The boys asked me, “Do you like classical music”?

5.  When the woman saw the price on the coat, she remarked to her friend, “I think you are crazy if you buy that coat at that price.”

6.  I inquired of the mechanic, “How much will it cost to repair my car”?

7.  The murderer stated to the judge, “I committed the murder because the man owed me some money for a gambling debt and he wouldn’t pay up.”

8.  The mailman said, “I haven’t delivered any mail to that house in over a week.”

9.  The teacher responded to the student’s question by saying, “I’m sorry, but I don’t know the answer.”

10.  The worker told his boss, “I can’t come to work tomorrow because I have a doctor’s appointment.”

11.  The president commented to his staff, “Sometimes this job is like living in hell.”

Exercise 28:  Use the following words to make reported-speech sentences, please.

1.  reported

2.  said

3.  inquired

4.  asked

5.  responded

6.  announced

7.  noted

8.  explained

9.  stated

10.  told

11. replied

12.  complained

13.  said

• Added: 29/05/2019
• Course type: Grammar Lessons
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English Grammar (Reported Speech): Lesson 3-In Academic Writing (with numerous examples!)

Academic writing can be demanding. Do you want to quote an author of a book and you want to avoid repeating the word 'SAY'? Here is a lesson for you.

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100 Reported Speech Examples: How To Change Direct Speech Into Indirect Speech

Reported speech, also known as indirect speech, is a way of communicating what someone else has said without quoting their exact words. For example, if your friend said, “ I am going to the store ,” in reported speech, you might convey this as, “ My friend said he was going to the store. ” Reported speech is common in both spoken and written language, especially in storytelling, news reporting, and everyday conversations.

Reported speech can be quite challenging for English language learners because in order to change direct speech into reported speech, one must change the perspective and tense of what was said by the original speaker or writer. In this guide, we will explain in detail how to change direct speech into indirect speech and provide lots of examples of reported speech to help you understand. Here are the key aspects of converting direct speech into reported speech.

Reported Speech: Changing Pronouns

Pronouns are usually changed to match the perspective of the person reporting the speech. For example, “I” in direct speech may become “he” or “she” in reported speech, depending on the context. Here are some example sentences:

• Direct : “I am going to the park.” Reported : He said he was going to the park .
• Direct : “You should try the new restaurant.” Reported : She said that I should try the new restaurant.
• Direct : “We will win the game.” Reported : They said that they would win the game.
• Direct : “She loves her new job.” Reported : He said that she loves her new job.
• Direct : “He can’t come to the party.” Reported : She said that he couldn’t come to the party.
• Direct : “It belongs to me.” Reported : He said that it belonged to him .
• Direct : “They are moving to a new city.” Reported : She said that they were moving to a new city.
• Direct : “You are doing a great job.” Reported : He told me that I was doing a great job.
• Direct : “I don’t like this movie.” Reported : She said that she didn’t like that movie.
• Direct : “We have finished our work.” Reported : They said that they had finished their work.
• Direct : “You will need to sign here.” Reported : He said that I would need to sign there.
• Direct : “She can solve the problem.” Reported : He said that she could solve the problem.
• Direct : “He was not at home yesterday.” Reported : She said that he had not been at home the day before.
• Direct : “It is my responsibility.” Reported : He said that it was his responsibility.
• Direct : “We are planning a surprise.” Reported : They said that they were planning a surprise.

Reported Speech: Reporting Verbs

In reported speech, various reporting verbs are used depending on the nature of the statement or the intention behind the communication. These verbs are essential for conveying the original tone, intent, or action of the speaker. Here are some examples demonstrating the use of different reporting verbs in reported speech:

• Direct: “I will help you,” she promised . Reported: She promised that she would help me.
• Direct: “You should study harder,” he advised . Reported: He advised that I should study harder.
• Direct: “I didn’t take your book,” he denied . Reported: He denied taking my book .
• Direct: “Let’s go to the cinema,” she suggested . Reported: She suggested going to the cinema .
• Direct: “I love this song,” he confessed . Reported: He confessed that he loved that song.
• Direct: “I haven’t seen her today,” she claimed . Reported: She claimed that she hadn’t seen her that day.
• Direct: “I will finish the project,” he assured . Reported: He assured me that he would finish the project.
• Direct: “I’m not feeling well,” she complained . Reported: She complained of not feeling well.
• Direct: “This is how you do it,” he explained . Reported: He explained how to do it.
• Direct: “I saw him yesterday,” she stated . Reported: She stated that she had seen him the day before.
• Direct: “Please open the window,” he requested . Reported: He requested that I open the window.
• Direct: “I can win this race,” he boasted . Reported: He boasted that he could win the race.
• Direct: “I’m moving to London,” she announced . Reported: She announced that she was moving to London.
• Direct: “I didn’t understand the instructions,” he admitted . Reported: He admitted that he didn’t understand the instructions.
• Direct: “I’ll call you tonight,” she promised . Reported: She promised to call me that night.

Reported Speech: Tense Shifts

When converting direct speech into reported speech, the verb tense is often shifted back one step in time. This is known as the “backshift” of tenses. It’s essential to adjust the tense to reflect the time elapsed between the original speech and the reporting. Here are some examples to illustrate how different tenses in direct speech are transformed in reported speech:

• Direct: “I am eating.” Reported: He said he was eating.
• Direct: “They will go to the park.” Reported: She mentioned they would go to the park.
• Direct: “We have finished our homework.” Reported: They told me they had finished their homework.
• Direct: “I do my exercises every morning.” Reported: He explained that he did his exercises every morning.
• Direct: “She is going to start a new job.” Reported: He heard she was going to start a new job.
• Direct: “I can solve this problem.” Reported: She said she could solve that problem.
• Direct: “We are visiting Paris next week.” Reported: They said they were visiting Paris the following week.
• Direct: “I will be waiting outside.” Reported: He stated he would be waiting outside.
• Direct: “They have been studying for hours.” Reported: She mentioned they had been studying for hours.
• Direct: “I can’t understand this chapter.” Reported: He complained that he couldn’t understand that chapter.
• Direct: “We were planning a surprise.” Reported: They told me they had been planning a surprise.
• Direct: “She has to complete her assignment.” Reported: He said she had to complete her assignment.
• Direct: “I will have finished the project by Monday.” Reported: She stated she would have finished the project by Monday.
• Direct: “They are going to hold a meeting.” Reported: She heard they were going to hold a meeting.
• Direct: “I must leave.” Reported: He said he had to leave.

Reported Speech: Changing Time and Place References

When converting direct speech into reported speech, references to time and place often need to be adjusted to fit the context of the reported speech. This is because the time and place relative to the speaker may have changed from the original statement to the time of reporting. Here are some examples to illustrate how time and place references change:

• Direct: “I will see you tomorrow .” Reported: He said he would see me the next day .
• Direct: “We went to the park yesterday .” Reported: They said they went to the park the day before .
• Direct: “I have been working here since Monday .” Reported: She mentioned she had been working there since Monday .
• Direct: “Let’s meet here at noon.” Reported: He suggested meeting there at noon.
• Direct: “I bought this last week .” Reported: She said she had bought it the previous week .
• Direct: “I will finish this by tomorrow .” Reported: He stated he would finish it by the next day .
• Direct: “She will move to New York next month .” Reported: He heard she would move to New York the following month .
• Direct: “They were at the festival this morning .” Reported: She said they were at the festival that morning .
• Direct: “I saw him here yesterday.” Reported: She mentioned she saw him there the day before.
• Direct: “We will return in a week .” Reported: They said they would return in a week .
• Direct: “I have an appointment today .” Reported: He said he had an appointment that day .
• Direct: “The event starts next Friday .” Reported: She mentioned the event starts the following Friday .
• Direct: “I lived in Berlin two years ago .” Reported: He stated he had lived in Berlin two years before .
• Direct: “I will call you tonight .” Reported: She said she would call me that night .
• Direct: “I was at the office yesterday .” Reported: He mentioned he was at the office the day before .

Reported Speech: Question Format

When converting questions from direct speech into reported speech, the format changes significantly. Unlike statements, questions require rephrasing into a statement format and often involve the use of introductory verbs like ‘asked’ or ‘inquired’. Here are some examples to demonstrate how questions in direct speech are converted into statements in reported speech:

• Direct: “Are you coming to the party?” Reported: She asked if I was coming to the party.
• Direct: “What time is the meeting?” Reported: He inquired what time the meeting was.
• Direct: “Why did you leave early?” Reported: They wanted to know why I had left early.
• Direct: “Can you help me with this?” Reported: She asked if I could help her with that.
• Direct: “Where did you buy this?” Reported: He wondered where I had bought that.
• Direct: “Who is going to the concert?” Reported: They asked who was going to the concert.
• Direct: “How do you solve this problem?” Reported: She questioned how to solve that problem.
• Direct: “Is this the right way to the station?” Reported: He inquired whether it was the right way to the station.
• Direct: “Do you know her name?” Reported: They asked if I knew her name.
• Direct: “Why are they moving out?” Reported: She wondered why they were moving out.
• Direct: “Have you seen my keys?” Reported: He asked if I had seen his keys.
• Direct: “What were they talking about?” Reported: She wanted to know what they had been talking about.
• Direct: “When will you return?” Reported: He asked when I would return.
• Direct: “Can she drive a manual car?” Reported: They inquired if she could drive a manual car.
• Direct: “How long have you been waiting?” Reported: She asked how long I had been waiting.

Reported Speech: Omitting Quotation Marks

In reported speech, quotation marks are not used, differentiating it from direct speech which requires them to enclose the spoken words. Reported speech summarizes or paraphrases what someone said without the need for exact wording. Here are examples showing how direct speech with quotation marks is transformed into reported speech without them:

• Direct: “I am feeling tired,” she said. Reported: She said she was feeling tired.
• Direct: “We will win the game,” he exclaimed. Reported: He exclaimed that they would win the game.
• Direct: “I don’t like apples,” the boy declared. Reported: The boy declared that he didn’t like apples.
• Direct: “You should visit Paris,” she suggested. Reported: She suggested that I should visit Paris.
• Direct: “I will be late,” he warned. Reported: He warned that he would be late.
• Direct: “I can’t believe you did that,” she expressed in surprise. Reported: She expressed her surprise that I had done that.
• Direct: “I need help with this task,” he admitted. Reported: He admitted that he needed help with the task.
• Direct: “I have never been to Italy,” she confessed. Reported: She confessed that she had never been to Italy.
• Direct: “We saw a movie last night,” they mentioned. Reported: They mentioned that they saw a movie the night before.
• Direct: “I am learning to play the piano,” he revealed. Reported: He revealed that he was learning to play the piano.
• Direct: “You must finish your homework,” she instructed. Reported: She instructed that I must finish my homework.
• Direct: “I will call you tomorrow,” he promised. Reported: He promised that he would call me the next day.
• Direct: “I have finished my assignment,” she announced. Reported: She announced that she had finished her assignment.
• Direct: “I cannot attend the meeting,” he apologized. Reported: He apologized for not being able to attend the meeting.
• Direct: “I don’t remember where I put it,” she confessed. Reported: She confessed that she didn’t remember where she put it.

Reported Speech Quiz

Thanks for reading! I hope you found these reported speech examples useful. Before you go, why not try this Reported Speech Quiz and see if you can change indirect speech into reported speech?

The impact of teacher academic support and L2 writing self on feedback-seeking behavior

• Published: 25 May 2024

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• Ya Zhang   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9087-9121 1  

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The literature has revealed the impact of personal factors on feedback-seeking behavior (FSB) in second language (L2) writing. However, little is known about how teacher academic support influences FSB in L2 writing and whether this relationship is mediated by L2 writing self (ideal and ought-to L2 writing selves). To address the lacunae, this study used a quantitative research design and a sample of 221 Chinese non-English major undergraduates to explore the relationships among teacher academic support, L2 writing self, and FSB. Structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis revealed that teacher academic support could directly predict the two dimensions of FSB (feedback monitoring and feedback inquiry) and L2 writing selves. Moreover, mediation analysis indicated that teacher academic support indirectly predicted both dimensions of FSB via ideal L2 writing self, and it also indirectly predicted feedback monitoring via ought-to L2 writing self. This study suggested that teacher academic support, as an environmental factor, could enhance learners’ writing motivation and self-regulated writing behaviors. Pedagogical implications for L2 writing instruction were discussed.

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The research has been supported by the Postgraduate Research & Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province (KYCX23-0216) to Ya Zhang.

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Study reveals brain mechanisms behind speech impairment in Parkinson’s

Most Parkinson’s disease patients struggle with speech problems. New research by Stanford Medicine scientists uncovers the brain connections that could be essential to preserving speech.

May 28, 2024 - By Nina Bai

Research by Stanford Medicine scientists may explain why some treatments for Parkinson’s — developed mainly to target motor symptoms — can improve speech impairments while other treatments make them worse. Lightspring /Shutterstock.com

Parkinson’s disease is most well-known and well-studied for its motor impairments — tremors, stiffness and slowness of movement. But less visible symptoms such as trouble with memory, attention and language, which also can profoundly impact a person’s quality of life, are less understood. A new study by Stanford Medicine researchers reveals the brain mechanisms behind one of the most prevalent, yet often overlooked, symptoms of the disease — speech impairment.

Based on brain imaging from Parkinson’s patients, the researchers identified specific connections in the brain that may determine the extent of speech difficulties.

The findings , reported May 20 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , could help explain why some treatments for Parkinson’s — developed mainly to target motor symptoms — can improve speech impairments while other treatments make them worse.

More than a motor disorder

“Parkinson’s disease is a very common neurological disorder, but it’s mostly considered a motor disorder,” said Weidong Cai , PhD, clinical associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and the lead author of the new study. “There’s been lots of research on how treatments such as medications and deep brain stimulation can help improve motor function in patients, but there was limited understanding about how these treatments affect cognitive function and speech.”

Over 90% of people with Parkinson’s experience difficulties with speech, an intricate neurological process that requires motor and cognitive control. Patients may struggle with a weak voice, slurring, mumbling and stuttering.

“Speech is a complex process that involves multiple cognitive functions, such as receiving auditory feedback, organizing thoughts and producing the final vocal output,” Cai said.

The senior author of the study is Vinod Menon , PhD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and director of the Stanford Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience Laboratory .

The researchers set out to study how levodopa, a common Parkinson’s drug that replaces the dopamine lost from the disease, affects overall cognitive function. They focused on the subthalamic nucleus, a small, pumpkin-seed-shaped region deep within the brain.

Weidong Cai

The subthalamic nucleus is known for its role in inhibiting motor activity, but there are clues to its involvement in other functions. For example, deep brain stimulation, which uses implanted electrodes to stimulate the subthalamic nucleus, has proven to be a powerful way to relieve motor symptoms for Parkinson’s patients — but a common side effect is worsened speech impairment.

Same test, different scores

In the new study, 27 participants with Parkinson’s disease and 43 healthy controls, all older than 60, took standard tests of motor and cognitive functioning. The participants with Parkinson’s took the tests while on and off their medication.

As expected, the medication improved motor functioning in the patients, with those having the most severe symptoms improving the most.

The test for cognitive functioning offered a surprise. The test, known as the Symbol Digit Modalities Test, is given in two forms — oral and written. Patients are provided with nine symbols, each matched with a number — a plus sign for the number 7, for example. They are then asked to translate a string of symbols into numbers, either speaking or writing down their answers, depending on the version of the test.

As a group, the patients’ performance on both versions of the cognitive test was little affected by medication. But taking a closer look, the researchers noticed that the subset of patients who performed particularly poorly on the spoken version of the test without medication improved their spoken performance on the medication. Their written test scores did not change significantly.

“It was quite interesting to find this dissociation between the written and oral version of the same test,” Cai said.

The dissociation suggested that the medication was not enhancing general cognitive functions such as attention and working memory, but it was selectively improving speech.

“Our research unveiled a previously unrecognized impact of dopaminergic drugs on the speech function of Parkinson’s patients,” Menon said.

Uncovering connections

Next, the researchers analyzed fMRI brain scans of the participants, looking at how the subthalamic nucleus interacted with brain networks dedicated to various functions, including hearing, vision, language and executive control.

Vinod Menon

They found that different parts of the subthalamic nucleus interacted with different networks.

In particular, they discovered that improvements on the oral version of the test correlated with better functional connectivity between the right side of the subthalamic nucleus and the brain’s language network.

Using a statistical model, they could even predict a patient’s improvement on the oral test based on changes in their brain’s functional connectivity.

“Here we’re not talking about an anatomical connection,” Cai explained. Rather, functional connectivity between brain regions means the activity in these regions is closely coordinated, as if they are talking to each other.

“We discovered that these medications influence speech by altering the functional connectivity between the subthalamic nucleus and crucial language networks,” Menon said. “This insight opens new avenues for therapeutic interventions tailored specifically to improve speech without deteriorating other cognitive abilities.”

This newly identified interaction between the subthalamic nucleus and the language network could serve as a biological indicator of speech behavior — in Parkinson’s as well as other speech disorders like stuttering.

Such a biomarker could be used to monitor treatment outcomes and inspire new therapies. “Of course, you can directly observe the outcome of a medication by observing behavior, but I think to have a biomarker in the brain will provide more useful information for the future development of drugs,” Cai said. 

The findings also provide a detailed map of the subthalamic nucleus, which could guide neurosurgeons performing deep brain stimulation in avoiding damage to an area critical to speech function. “By identifying key neural maps and connections that predict speech improvement, we can craft more effective treatment plans that are both precise and personalized for Parkinson’s disease patients,” Menon said.

The study received funding from the National Institutes of Health (grants P50 AG047366, P30 AG066515, RF1 NS086085, R21 DC017950-S1, R01 NS115114, R01 MH121069 and K99 AG071837) and the Alzheimer’s Association.

About Stanford Medicine

Stanford Medicine is an integrated academic health system comprising the Stanford School of Medicine and adult and pediatric health care delivery systems. Together, they harness the full potential of biomedicine through collaborative research, education and clinical care for patients. For more information, please visit med.stanford.edu .

Hope amid crisis

Psychiatry’s new frontiers

Washington Square News

NYU Langone terminates nurse after speech about ‘current genocide in Gaza’

A labor nurse at NYU Langone Health was terminated earlier this month after she spoke about the suffering of women “during the current genocide in Gaza” in a speech when accepting an award for her work aiding mothers who had lost their children during pregnancy and childbirth. 

Hesen Jabr received this year’s Sebastian Brown Compassionate Care Award from NYU Langone’s nursing department on May 7 when she said “it pains me to see the women from my country going through unimaginable losses” in the war in Gaza. Jabr, a Palestinian American Muslim, said she was allegedly “dragged into” a meeting with administrators at the medical center on May 22 to discuss how she had “offended people” and “ruined the ceremony” before receiving her termination letter, according to a post on her public Instagram account. 

“I am proud to represent my mother’s and my grandmother’s upbringing through our traditions and customs, which oblige us to always hold space for warmth and compassion for all humans,” Jabr said in a recording of her speech on Instagram. “This award is deeply personal to me for those reasons, even though I can’t hold their hands and comfort them as they grieve their unborn children and the children they have lost during this genocide.”

Steve Ritea, a spokesperson for NYU Langone, told WSN Jabr was “warned” not to “bring her views on this divisive and charged issue into the workplace” in December following a previous incident — the details of which he did not specify. Ritea said the medical center has regularly reminded all employees of its Code of Conduct and Social Media Policy.

“She instead chose not to heed that at a recent employee recognition event that was widely attended by her colleagues, some of whom were upset after her comments,” Ritea wrote. “As an institution dedicated to healing, NYU Langone remains committed to providing a safe and inclusive environment, free of discrimination, for all of our employees and patients.”

In November, NYU Langone removed physician Zaki Masoud from his residency program after he reposted a message in support of Palestinian resistance on a private Instagram account. A petition to reinstate him spread across social media soon after, garnering over 100,000 signatures. 

In a separate incident the same month, the former director of NYU Langone Health’s Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center was terminated after making social media posts related to the war in Gaza, which some have called “racist” and “anti-Arab.” The former director, Benjamin Neel, has since filed a lawsuit against the medical center alleging he was terminated without due process and that he was discriminated against on the basis of religion. 

Jabr did not respond to a request for comment.

Contact Yezen Saadah at [email protected] .

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The human auditory system uses amplitude modulation to distinguish music from speech

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Software, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, New York, United States of America

Roles Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Department of Psychology, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China

Affiliation Instituto de Neurobiología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Juriquilla, Querétaro, México

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Supervision, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliations Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, New York, United States of America, Ernst Struengmann Institute for Neuroscience, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Center for Language, Music, and Emotion (CLaME), New York University, New York, New York, United States of America, Music and Audio Research Lab (MARL), New York University, New York, New York, United States of America

• Andrew Chang, 
• Xiangbin Teng, 
• M. Florencia Assaneo, 
• David Poeppel

• Published: May 28, 2024
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002631
• Reader Comments

Music and speech are complex and distinct auditory signals that are both foundational to the human experience. The mechanisms underpinning each domain are widely investigated. However, what perceptual mechanism transforms a sound into music or speech and how basic acoustic information is required to distinguish between them remain open questions. Here, we hypothesized that a sound’s amplitude modulation (AM), an essential temporal acoustic feature driving the auditory system across processing levels, is critical for distinguishing music and speech. Specifically, in contrast to paradigms using naturalistic acoustic signals (that can be challenging to interpret), we used a noise-probing approach to untangle the auditory mechanism: If AM rate and regularity are critical for perceptually distinguishing music and speech, judging artificially noise-synthesized ambiguous audio signals should align with their AM parameters. Across 4 experiments ( N = 335), signals with a higher peak AM frequency tend to be judged as speech, lower as music. Interestingly, this principle is consistently used by all listeners for speech judgments, but only by musically sophisticated listeners for music. In addition, signals with more regular AM are judged as music over speech, and this feature is more critical for music judgment, regardless of musical sophistication. The data suggest that the auditory system can rely on a low-level acoustic property as basic as AM to distinguish music from speech, a simple principle that provokes both neurophysiological and evolutionary experiments and speculations.

Citation: Chang A, Teng X, Assaneo MF, Poeppel D (2024) The human auditory system uses amplitude modulation to distinguish music from speech. PLoS Biol 22(5): e3002631. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002631

Academic Editor: Manuel S. Malmierca, Universidad de Salamanca, SPAIN

Received: October 15, 2023; Accepted: April 17, 2024; Published: May 28, 2024

Copyright: © 2024 Chang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: All stimuli, experimental programs, raw data, and analysis codes have been deposited at a publicly available OSF repository ( https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/RDTGC ).

Funding: A.C. was supported by a Ruth L. Kirschstein Postdoctoral Individual National Research Service Award, National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders/National Institutes of Health (F32DC018205) and Leon Levy Scholarships in Neuroscience, Leon Levy Foundation/New York Academy of Sciences. X.T. was supported by Improvement on Competitiveness in Hiring New Faculties Funding Scheme, the Chinese University of Hong Kong (4937113). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

Music and speech, two complex auditory signals, are frequently compared across many levels of biological sciences, ranging from system and cognitive neuroscience to comparative and evolutionary biology. As acoustic signals, they exhibit a range of interesting similarities (e.g., temporal structure [ 1 , 2 ]) and differences (e.g., music, but not speech, features discrete pitch intervals). In the brain, they are processed by both shared [ 3 – 6 ] and specialized [ 7 – 10 ] neural substrates. However, which acoustic information underpins a sound to be perceived as music or speech remains an open question.

One way to address the broader question of how music and speech are organized in the human mind/brain is to capitalize on ecologically valid, “real” signals, a more holistic approach. That strategy has the advantage of working with stimulus materials that are naturalistic and, therefore, engage the perceptual and neural systems in a typical manner (e.g., [ 11 , 12 ]). The disadvantage of adopting such an experimental attack is that it can be quite challenging to identify and isolate the components and processes that underpin perception. Here, we pursue the alternative reductionist approach: parametrically generating and manipulating ambiguous auditory stimuli with basic, analytically tractable amplitude modulation (AM) features. If the auditory system distinguishes music and speech according to the low-level acoustic parameters, the music/speech judgment on artificially noise-synthesized ambiguous audio signals should align with their AM parameters, even if no real music or speech is contained in the signal.

In the neural domain, AM is a basic acoustic feature that drives auditory neuronal circuits and underlying complex communicative functions across both humans and nonhuman animals. At the micro- and meso-levels, single-cell and population recording of auditory cortex neurons in nonhuman animals demonstrated various mechanisms to encode AM features (e.g., [ 13 , 14 ]). At the macro-level, human neuroimaging studies showed that the acoustic AM synchronizes the neural activities at auditory cortex and correlated with perception and speech comprehensions (e.g., [ 15 – 18 ]). A critical but underexplored gap is the mechanism of how low-level AM features affect a sound to be processed as a complex high-level signal such as music and speech.

Our experiments tested the hypothesis that a remarkably basic acoustic parameter can, in part , determine a sound to be perceptually judged as music or speech. The conjecture is that AM ( Fig 1 ) is one crucial acoustic factor to distinguish music and speech. Previous studies that quantified many hours and a wide variety of music and speech recordings showed distinct peak AM rates in the modulation spectrum: music peaks at 1 to 2 Hz and speech peaks at 3.5 to 5.5 Hz [ 19 – 21 ]. Consistent with those findings, these rate differences are also observed in spontaneous speech and music production [ 22 ]. Next, temporal regularity of AM could also be important, as music is often metrically organized with an underlying beat, whereas speech is not periodic and is better considered quasirhythmic [ 20 , 23 ]. Also, supporting the relevant role played by AM, neuroimaging evidence showed that temporally scrambled but spectrally intact signals weaken neural activity in speech- or music-related cortical clusters [ 9 , 24 ]. Finally, a preliminary study ( n = 12) showed that listeners were able to near-perfectly categorize 1-channel noise-vocoded realistic speech and music excerpts [ 19 ]. However, the noise-vocoding approach was insufficient to mechanistically pinpoint the degree to which AM rate and regularity contribute to music/speech distinction, as this manipulation preserved all the envelope temporal features above and beyond rate and regularity. For example, onset sharpness of speech envelope is encoded by the spoken language cortical network (superior temporal gyrus) and critical to comprehension [ 25 – 27 ]; also, the onset sharpness of the music envelope is crucial for timbre perception, e.g., a piano tone typically has a sharper onset than violin. We therefore build on the notion that the AM distinction between music and speech signals appears to be acoustically robust. However, in order to advance our understanding of potential mechanisms, we ask what aspects of the AM influence listeners to make this perceptual distinction. How acoustically reduced and simple can a signal be and still be judged to be speech or music?

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002631.g001

Based on the literature, we hypothesized that stimuli with a lower-in-modulation-frequency and narrower-in-variance peak (i.e., higher temporal regularity, more isochrony) in the AM spectrum would be judged as music, while those with higher and broader peaks (i.e., lower temporal regularity) as speech. If these hypotheses are plausible, artificial sounds synthesized with the designated AM properties should be perceptually categorized accordingly. This noise-probing approach is conceptually similar to the reverse-correlation approach in studies seeking to understand what features are driving the “black-box” perceptual system (e.g., [ 28 , 29 ]). In short, we synthesized stimuli with specific AM parameters by “reversing” a pipeline for analyzing realistic, naturalistic music and speech recordings ( Fig 1B ). First, we used a lognormal function that resembles the empirically determined AM spectra reported in previous studies [ 19 , 20 ]; this function permits the independent manipulation of peak frequency and temporal regularity parameters. Next, after transforming each AM spectrum into a time-domain AM signal (inverse Fourier transform), that signal was used to modulate a flat white noise (i.e., low-noise noise) carrier to generate a 4-s duration experimental stimulus. This approach, importantly, eliminates typical spectral features of both music and speech. In our 4 online experiments, participants were told that each stimulus came from a real music or speech recording but was synthesized with noise, and their task was to judge whether it was music or speech. Although none of the stimuli sounded like real music or speech, participants’ judgments revealed how well each stimulus matched their internal representation of one or the other perceptual category.

In Experiment 1, we manipulated peak AM frequency while σ (the regularity parameter, or the width of the peak of the AM spectrum; see Methods ) was fixed at 0.35 (the value was chosen as it sounded the most “natural” or “comfortable” according to the informal feedback from colleagues in the lab). Stimuli were presented one at a time, and participants were requested to judge whether a stimulus is music or speech. Data from 129 participants were included in the analyses. The overall responses are presented in Fig 2A . To investigate the effect of peak frequencies, each participant’s responses (speech = 1, music = 0) were linearly regressed on the peak frequencies (mean ± standard error of R 2 = 0.53 ± 0.03; Fig 2B ). The response slopes were significantly above 0 ( Fig 2C ; t (128) = 7.70, p < 10 −11 , Cohen’s d = 0.68), suggesting that people judge sounds with a higher peak AM frequency as speech and sounds with a lower peak AM frequency as music. We then explored the association of this judgment with participants’ musical sophistication and found that the participants with a higher General Musical Sophistication score (Gold-MSI [ 30 ]; see Methods ) were more likely to have a higher response slope ( r (127) = 0.17, p = 0.056; but after removing 1 outlier: r (126) = 0.20, p = 0.023; Fig 2D ). We further split the participants by slope at 0 and performed an unequal-variance 2-sample t test without removing that 1 outlier. This analysis confirmed that the participants with a positive response slope have higher General Musical Sophistication scores than the participants with a negative slope ( t (57.25) = 2.96, p = 0.005, Cohen’s d = 0.57). We further correlated the response slope with each subscale of the musical sophistication index, but none of them were significant (unsigned r (127) < 0.16, p > 0.075). While null effects should be interpreted with caution, this suggests that general musical sophistication, rather than a specific musical aspect, is driving the outcome. In short, the findings show that the sounds with a higher peak AM frequency are more likely to be judged as speech and lower as music, and this tendency is positively associated with participants’ general musical sophistication.

( A ) The music vs. speech judgment response of each participant at different levels of AM peak frequencies. ( B ) Fitted regression lines of each participant’s response. ( C ) Each dot represents the response slope on peak frequencies of a participant, and the bar and the error bars represent the mean ± standard error. The participants’ response slopes were significantly above 0, suggesting that the participants tend to judge the stimuli with a higher peak AM frequency as speech and lower as music. ( D ) The response slopes and the General Musical Sophistication score of the participants were positively correlated, suggesting that the musically more sophisticated participants are more likely to judge the stimuli with a higher peak AM frequency as speech and a lower peak frequency as music. Note that the gray circle marks the outlier, and the regression line and the p -value reported on the figure were based on the analysis without the outlier. Underlying data and scripts are available at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/RDTGC and in S1 Data .

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002631.g002

Note that we attempted to fit the data with a logistic psychometric function. Although the findings were consistent as the fitted slopes of the logistic model were also significantly above 0 ( t (128) = 6.85, p < 10 −9 ), suggesting the sounds with a higher peak AM frequency are more likely to be judged as speech over music, the R 2 of the logistic model were much lower than the linear model (mean R 2 difference: 0.19), so did the following experiments (see Methods for more details), suggesting that the linear model was a more appropriate model. Therefore, only the linear models were interpreted.

To investigate the effect of temporal regularity, in Experiment 2, we manipulated AM temporal regularity (σ) at 3 peak AM frequencies (1, 2.5, and 4 Hz, which roughly correspond to the AM range of music, a midpoint, and speech). The procedure was identical to Experiment 1, and data from 48 participants were included. The overall responses are presented in Fig 3A . Each participant’s responses were linearly regressed on the σ under each peak frequency ( R 2 = 0.37 ± 0.02; Fig 3B ). The response slopes were significantly above 0 for the peak frequency at 1 Hz ( t (47) = 6.19, p < 10 −6 , Cohen’s d = 0.89) and 2.5 Hz ( t (47) = 6.37, p < 10 −7 , Cohen’s d = 0.92), suggesting that listeners tend to judge sounds with lower temporal regularity (higher σ) as speech and higher regularity as music ( Fig 3C ). Note that this pattern was the opposite for the peak frequency at 4 Hz, with a lower effect size ( t (47) = −3.34, p = 0.016, Cohen’s d = 0.48). It suggests that the association between temporal regularity and the music judgment is conditional on the low-to-mid peak AM frequency range, and the influence of temporal regularity is weaker when peak AM frequency is in the AM range of speech. We also examined the associations between participants’ musical sophistication levels and response slope, but no correlation was significant ( Fig 3D ; unsigned r (46) < 0.13, p = 0.404).

( A ) The music vs. speech judgment response of each participant at different levels of temporal regularity (σ). ( B ) Fitted regression lines of each participant’s response. ( C ) The participants’ response slopes on σ were significantly above 0 for the peak AM frequencies at 1 and 2.5 Hz but not 4 Hz. This suggests that participants tend to judge the temporally more regular stimuli as music and irregular as speech, but this tendency was not observed when the peak frequency was as high as 4 Hz. ( D ) The response slopes and the General Musical Sophistication scores were not correlated at any peak AM frequencies. Underlying data and scripts are available at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/RDTGC and in S1 Data . n . s ., nonsignificant.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002631.g003

The dichotomy of the behavioral judgment that our task imposes could be a concern because it only allows a stimulus to be judged as music or speech, while ignoring other possible categories. It is, to be sure, reasonable to directly contrast music and speech, as these are arguably among the most dominant high-level auditory forms in human cognition, sharing many commonalities (cf., [ 1 , 9 ]), and a discrimination task between two categories is usually considered psychophysically more powerful than two separate detection tasks on each category [ 31 ]. However, other auditory categories, such as animal calls and environmental sounds, are critical in human perception as well. Therefore, we tested the robustness of the findings of Experiments 1 and 2 by replicating them with detection tasks, and we investigated whether there were effects specific to music or speech.

In Experiment 3, peak AM frequency was manipulated with σ fixed at 0.35; 80 participants were included in the analyses. In the “music detection” task, participants were instructed that 50% of the stimuli were music and 50% were not music (“others”), and they were asked to judge whether it was music or something else. For the “speech detection” task, the task was analogous. The 50% instruction was added to prevent participants with a strong response bias. Each participant performed both tasks with the same stimuli. The overall responses are presented in Fig 4A . Each participant’s responses (music or speech = 1, others = 0) were linearly regressed on peak frequency for each task ( R 2 = 0.68 ± 0.02; Fig 4B ). For the speech task, the response slopes were significantly above 0 ( t (79) = 12.79, p < 10 −20 , Cohen’s d = 1.43; Fig 4C ), suggesting that the sounds with a higher peak AM frequencies are more likely to be judged as speech over others. Musical sophistication did not correlate with the speech response slope ( r (78) = 0.04, p = 0.717; Fig 4D ). For the music task, the response slope was not significantly different from 0 ( t (79) = 0.49, p = 0.628, Cohen’s d = 0.05; Fig 4C ). Interestingly, there was a significant correlation suggesting that the more musically sophisticated participants are more likely to judge the sound with a lower peak AM frequency as music ( r (78) = −0.28, p = 0.011; Fig 4D ), and this is again confirmed by the unequal-variance 2-sample t test between split-data at slope equals to 0 ( t (72.57) = 2.66, p = 0.010, Cohen’s d = 0.58). We also correlated the response slope with each subscale; however, once again, none of them passed the Bonferroni-corrected statistical threshold at 0.01 (unsigned r (78) < 0.28, p > 0.013). Together, the effect of peak AM frequency reported in Experiment 1 is robustly replicated for the speech judgment, but the music judgment was conditional on participants’ general musical sophistication.

Results of Experiments 3 (A-D) and 4 (E-H). ( A ) The “music vs. others” and “speech vs. others” judgment response of each participant at different levels of peak AM frequencies. ( B ) The fitted regression line of each participant’s response. ( C ) The participants’ response slopes on peak frequencies were significantly above 0 for the speech task but not for the music task, suggesting that the participants tend to judge the stimuli with a higher peak AM frequency as speech. ( D ) The response slopes and the General Musical Sophistication scores of the participants were positively correlated for the music task but not for the speech task, suggesting that the musically more sophisticated participants are more likely to judge the stimuli with a lower peak AM frequency as music. ( E - H ) The same format as above, but at different levels of temporal regularity (σ). The participants tend to judge the stimuli with a higher temporal regularity as music. Underlying data and scripts are available at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/RDTGC and in S1 Data . n . s ., nonsignificant.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002631.g004

In Experiment 4, AM temporal regularity was manipulated while the peak AM frequency was fixed at 2 Hz (equally likely to be judged as music or speech, according to the previous experiments). The tasks were as in Experiment 3, and data from 78 participants were included. The overall responses are shown in Fig 4E . Each participant’s responses were linearly regressed on σ for each task ( R 2 = 0.32 ± 0.02; Fig 4F ). For the music task, the response slope was significantly below 0 ( t (77) = -4.95, p < 10 −5 , Cohen’s d = 0.56; Fig 4G ), suggesting that people tend to judge the sounds with higher temporal regularity (lower σ) as music. For the speech task, the response slopes were slightly above 0 but not reaching the statistical threshold ( t (77) = 1.89, p = 0.063, Cohen’s d = 0.21; Fig 4G ). We did not observe any associations between participants’ musical sophistication and response slope (unsigned r (76) < 0.13, p > 0.293; Fig 4H ). Together, the effect of AM temporal regularity reported in Experiment 2 was robustly replicated for music but only a trend was observed for speech.

These surprising findings and their replications show that listeners use acoustic amplitude modulations in sounds, one of the most basic features, fundamental to human auditory perception, to judge whether a sound is “like” music or speech, even when spectral features are eliminated. We show that peak AM frequency can affect high-level categorization: Sounds with a higher peak AM frequency tend to be judged as speech, those with a lower peak as music, especially among musically sophisticated participants. This pattern is consistent with previous quantifications of natural music recordings showing that the peak AM frequency of music is lower than speech [ 19 ]. This result might arise because of participants’ (implicit) knowledge of this acoustic feature. We note that, while the effect of peak AM frequency in Experiment 1 was robustly replicated in the speech task in Experiment 3, in the music task, the effect was more salient among musically sophisticated participants but not visible when pooling all participants. In other words, peak AM frequency is a universal cue for speech but not for music. A possible explanation is that this effect depends on listeners’ experience or sophistication with music or speech sounds. While our participants exhibited a ceiling effect for speech (as university students, every listener can be classified as an “expert” in speech), their musical sophistication scores appeared lower than the norm (Experiment 3 versus Müllensiefen and colleagues [ 30 ]: 71.39 versus 81.58, Cohen’s d = 0.49; but it is similar to other studies (e.g., [ 32 , 33 ])). The potential effect of speech expertise would need to be examined, for example, in future developmental studies in which expertise can be more carefully controlled.

Temporal regularity (and, in the extreme, isochrony, if σ = 0) of AM also has an effect: Sounds with more regular modulation are more likely to be judged as music than speech. This is consistent with the fact that Western music is usually metrically organized while speech is quasirhythmic [ 20 , 23 ]. There are a few aspects worth discussing. First, this effect is more relevant to music than to speech. The detection tasks in Experiment 4 show that the effect of temporal regularity is only robustly observed for music but not for speech. It appears that temporal regularity is a more prevalent principle than peak AM frequency to judge a sound as music as this effect does not depend on the listener’s musical sophistication. Second, in Experiment 2, the effect of temporal regularity was slightly opposite when the peak AM frequency was at 4 Hz. A possible explanation is that temporal regularity might be less critical for distinguishing music and speech when peak AM frequency is already in the canonical speech range 3.5 to 5.5 Hz [ 19 – 21 ]. Last but not least, while temporal regularity in the current parameter range did not drastically influence the auditory judgments, the current data demonstrate a clear pattern across participants: A sound with a more temporally regular AM is more like music.

AM is one of the most fundamental building blocks for auditory perception, and especially so for human speech. While frequency/spectral information is critical for auditory object identification, pitch perception, and timbre, AM is considered a key information-bearing component and critical for speech intelligibility [ 34 , 35 ]. AM, especially around the 2-4 Hz, is faithfully encoded by neurons in the primary auditory cortex [ 14 , 36 ]. While previous studies have demonstrated that temporal envelope information alone is arguably sufficient for speech perception (e.g., [ 37 ]), the current findings further show that AM rate can be used to identify a sound as speech or not (i.e., Fig 4C ). Relatedly, AM rate helps identify music, at least among musically sophisticated listeners. This could be for different reasons. First, music has salient features in both time and frequency domains. A recent survey showed that adults explicitly consider both AM regularity (rhythm/beat) and melody (frequency/spectral domain), but not AM rate, as being the primary acoustic features for distinguishing speech and song [ 38 ]. This is consistent with the current finding that people rely on AM regularity more than rate to identify music. Second, the association between AM rate and music perception might require musical experience. This is consistent with the neural entrainment studies showing that the fidelity of auditory cortex entraining to music rhythm is positively associated with the musical expertise of the listeners [ 25 , 39 ]. Together, our data provide the empirical advance that AM rate or regularity alone, regardless of the fine temporal features (e.g., onset sharpness) preserved by the noise-vocoded approach [ 19 ], have an effect on the music/speech judgment. Given that the AM rate and regularity are processed early in the auditory cortex [ 14 ], notably prior to superior temporal gyrus encoding of speech onset (e.g., [ 26 , 27 ]), AM rate or regularity should have more decisive roles than temporal envelope features for distinguishing music and speech at an early stage of the auditory cortical pathway.

The current study has four noteworthy limitations. First, the lognormal function can resemble the average AM spectrum of many hours of music or speech recordings [ 19 ], but it does not necessarily approximate individual recordings well. Second, the current forced-choice task design can only demonstrate how acoustic features affect the auditory judgments , but whether participants subjectively experienced the percepts of our stimuli as “reduced” forms of music or speech is unclear, as the rich spectral and timbral features of typical music or speech were by design eliminated from the stimuli. Third, while the current experimental design only showed the influences of AM rate and regularity on distinguishing music and speech, we did not compare their influences to those of other acoustic features. Although spectral or frequency modulation, orthogonal to AM, is another promising acoustic feature fundamental to auditory perception, the current study focuses on only the AM aspect as it has been demonstrated distinct between music and speech acoustics while the spectral aspect has not. Lastly, the factors that contributed to the substantial individual differences in music-related tasks remain unclear, and musical sophistication only partially accounts for it. Other perceptual and cognitive factors (e.g., preference for fast or slow music, unawareness of hearing loss among young adults) and experimental factors (e.g., whether the participants were exposed to any specific music or speech in the environment while performing our experiment online, remotely, and on their own) likely contributed to the individual differences as well. Nevertheless, our reductionist approach demonstrates the striking fact that music or speech judgment starts from basic acoustic features such as AM.

A related phenomenon that builds on the role of temporal structure can be illuminated by these data. The speech-to-song illusion demonstrates that, by looping a (real) speech excerpt, the perceptual judgment can gradually shift from speech toward song [ 40 – 42 ]. The effects reported here are consistent with the speech-to-song illusion: The low frequency power of the AM spectrum would emerge from the repeating-segment periodicity and, therefore, bias the judgment toward music. Supporting this view, this illusion disappears if speech is temporally jumbled in every repetition [ 40 ], which eliminates low-frequency periodicity across repetitions. Furthermore, consistent with our findings, the strength of the illusion is also positively associated with beat regularity and participants’ musical expertise [ 41 , 43 – 45 ].

The properties of AM that support the distinction of music and speech merit consideration in the context of human evolution and neurophysiology. Group cohesion and interpersonal interaction have been hypothesized as one primary function of music [ 46 – 53 ]. If music serves as an auditory cue for coordinating group behaviors, predictable temporal regularity at the optimal rate for human movements and audiomotor synchronization (1 to 2 Hz; [ 54 – 56 ]) would be important. And, in fact, motor brain networks are involved while processing auditory rhythms (e.g., [ 57 – 64 ]). The AM rate of speech, analogously, has been attributed to the neurophysiological properties of the specialized auditory-motor oscillatory network for speech perception and production, as well as the associated biomechanics of the articulatory movements [ 17 , 20 , 65 , 66 ]. Consistent with these data patterns, perceptual studies have also shown a general pattern that music versus speech task performance is optimal with rates ranging around 0.5 to 6.7 and 2 to 9 Hz, respectively [ 67 , 68 ].

The experimental results we present demonstrate that human listeners can use a basic acoustic feature fundamental to auditory perception to judge whether a sound is like music or speech. These data reveal a potential processing principle that invites both neurophysiological and evolutionary experiments and speculations that could further address the long-lasting questions on the comparison between music and speech in both the humanities and the sciences.

Resource availability

All stimuli, experimental programs, raw data, and analysis codes have been deposited at a publicly available OSF repository ( https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/RDTGC ).

Participants

The participants were students at New York University who signed up for the studies via the SONA online platform and received course credit for completing the experiments. The local Institutional Review Board (New York University’s Committee on Activities Involving Human Subjects) approved all protocols (IRB-FY2016-1357), in complete adherence to the principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki. All participants provided informed consent via an online form. Participants had self-reported normal hearing, were at least 18 years old, and reported no cognitive, developmental, neurological, psychiatric, or speech-language disorders. The total number of online participants was 488, and the data of 335 participants (208 females, 122 males, 5 other/prefer not to say, age range: 18 to 25) were included for analysis (see Quantification and statistical analysis for exclusion criteria, and Results for the sample size of each experiment).

The pipeline to generate audio stimuli with a designated peak AM frequency and temporal regularity parameters is composed of the following steps (resembling an inverse pipeline for analyzing audio recordings), which are conceptually illustrated in Fig 1 .

• An inverse fast Fourier transformation with random phases was applied to an AM spectrum to generate a 20-s time-domain signal with a 44.1-kHz sampling rate, and then it was transformed to an amplitude envelope [ 69 , 70 ].
• The resulting amplitude envelope was used to modulate a 20- to 20,000-Hz low-noise noise (LNN) carrier sound. The LNN is a white noise with a flat amplitude envelope [ 71 , 72 ], which ensures that the amplitude fluctuations of the final stimuli were not caused by the carrier signal.
• The middle 4-s segment of each 20-s amplitude-modulated LNN was extracted as a stimulus.
• There were 100, 50, 50, and 50 stimuli generated for each condition of Experiments 1 to 4, respectively, and the root-mean-square values of all the stimuli were equalized within each experiment. All steps were performed using MATLAB R2020a.

The experiments were programmed on PsychoPy Builder (v2020.1.2) and executed on the Pavlovia.org platform.

The participants were required to perform the experiment using a browser on their personal computer, in a quiet environment with headphones on, and each listener could set the audio volume at a comfortable level. First, only those participants who passed a headphone screening task (see below) could proceed. Next, the practice phase included 4 trials; the AM parameters of these stimuli were within the range of, but not identical to, the parameter values used in the subsequent testing phase. On each practice trial, a stimulus was presented, and then participants were asked to make a binary judgment by clicking a button on the screen, without time limit. After the response, the next trial started. A probe trial was inserted in the practice phase, which presented 1 to 4 brief tones without warning in a 2-s window with random stimulus-onset asynchronies, and the participants were requested to indicate the number of tones by pressing the corresponding key. Participants could repeat the practice phase until they felt comfortable to proceed to the testing phase. Only in Experiments 3 and 4, a practice phase was inserted prior to each of the first music and speech blocks.

In the testing phase, for Experiments 1 and 2, for each participant, a set of 150 unique stimuli (15 or 10 per condition in Experiments 1 or 2, respectively) were randomly drawn from the stimulus pool, and they were randomly ordered within each of the first and second half of the experiment, resulting in a total of 300 testing trials. There was no cue between two halves of the experiment. The participants were not instructed regarding the occurrence rates of “music” or “speech.”

For Experiments 3 and 4, within each of the first and second halves of the experiment, there were 1 music block and 1 speech block, randomly ordered. Within each block, there were 75 unique stimuli (15 per condition) randomly drawn from the stimulus pool, and the same set of stimuli was used for all 4 blocks for each participant, resulting in a total of 150 trials for each task and, therefore, totaling 300 testing trials for the entire experiment. Before and during each block, there were text and visual cues on the screen to remind the participants of the current block type. The participants were instructed that 50% of the trials were music or speech and 50% were not music or speech (“others”), respectively, for each block type.

For all the experiments, the procedure of each testing trial was identical to the practice trial. A self-paced break was inserted every 10 trials, and the percentage of progress in the experiment was shown on the screen during the break. Twelve probe trials were mixed with roughly even spaces with the testing trials.

After the experiment, participants were directed to another webpage to anonymously fill out demographic information, the Goldsmiths musical sophistication index, and other background and task-related questions (not analyzed).

Headphone screening task.

The participants were requested to perform a headphone screening task prior to the main task, to ensure that they used headphones to complete our online experiments [ 73 ]. On each trial, participants were asked to identify the quietest tone (3-alternative forced choice) among three 1-s duration 200 Hz pure tones (with 100 ms ramps), including a binaurally in-phase loud tone, an antiphase loud tone, and an in-phase quiet tone of (−6 dB). Stimuli were presented sequentially with counterbalanced orders across 6 trials. Because the antiphase loud tone would be attenuated by phase cancelation in the air if it was played through loudspeakers, the quietest tone can only be correctly identified with headphones. Participants had to perform at least 5 out of 6 trials correctly to proceed.

Goldsmith musical sophistication index (Gold-MSI).

The Gold-MSI is one of the most common and reliable indices and for assessing musicality [ 30 ]. It is composed of 39 questions to assess multiple aspects of music expertise, including active engagement, perceptual abilities, musical training, singing abilities, and emotional responses. The General Musical Sophistication subscale is a general index that covers all the aspects of Gold-MSI, which ranges from 18 to 126; the mean and the standard deviation of the norm (147,633 participants) are 81.58 and 20.62, and the reliability α is 0.926.

Quantification and statistical analysis

Since all participants completed the study online without supervision, we used several exclusion criteria to ensure data quality. (1) The participants who did not complete both the experiment and the questionnaire, who did not pass the headphone screening task, admitted not using headphones throughout the experiment, made the same response for all the trials, or whose probe trial accuracy below 90%, were excluded. These criteria excluded 41, 19, 31, and 23 participants from Experiments 1, 2, 3, and 4. (2) Since the participants were instructed that the occurrence rate of music/speech was 50% in Experiments 3 and 4, the participants whose response biases exceeded 50 ± 15% in any task were excluded. This criterion excluded 16 and 23 participants from Experiments 3 and 4. Statistical test significance was assessed with α = .05, two-tailed. The specific tests used are reported in the Results section. The computations were performed on MATLAB R2020a and R2021b.

Power analysis and sample sizes

As the effect size of this task was unknown, in the Experiment 1, we recruited more than 100 participants to reduce the risk of being underpowered and to estimate the statistical power for the following experiments. Based on the data of Experiment 1, a power analysis showed that the required number of participants was 20 when alpha level was set at 0.05 and statistical power at 0.8, and 36 when alpha level was set at 0.01 and statistical power at 0.9. Therefore, we targeted the sample size of Experiment 2 to be slightly above those levels ( n > 40). Although the tasks of Experiments 3 and 4 were similar to Experiments 1 and 2, the judgment of “speech versus others” and “music versus others” might have a lower statistical power than “music versus speech,” as “others” is not a well-defined category. Therefore, we set the target sample sizes to be double ( n ≈ 80) as the required sample size of alpha at 0.01 and power at 0.9.

Supporting information

S1 data. data underlying the plots in fig 2 – 4 ..

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002631.s001

Acknowledgments

We thank the Poeppel Lab members at New York University, Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Ernst Struengmann Institute for Neuroscience, and Benjamin Morillon for their comments and support.

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Who’d Want to Give a Commencement Speech Anymore?

Executive communications experts say the gig is becoming a harder sell for business leaders.

By Sarah Kessler ,  Lauren Hirsch and Michael J. de la Merced

Tim Cook has delivered at least seven commencement addresses since becoming the chief executive of Apple. The superstar Taylor Swift, whose concerts have been credited with lifting local economies, addressed New York University’s graduation ceremony in 2022. Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Jamie Dimon — they’ve all given graduation speeches more than once.

They’re obviously not doing it for the money (and typically there isn’t any). Instead, speakers have long seen graduation ceremonies as offering something increasingly rare: a stage where a large group of people gather to hear speakers impart wisdom, advice or whatever else they want to talk about.

The appeal of being a commencement speaker, however, seems to be waning.

Just three Fortune 50 chief executives appear to be commencement speakers this year, as colleges have faced campus protests over the war in Gaza, student arrests and wealthy alumni threatening to break ties with their alma maters over antisemitism.

“The idea of C.E.O.s going out aggressively and speaking anywhere near this environment on campuses, it just doesn’t seem like the moment for them to be doing that,” said David Murray, the executive director of the Professional Speechwriters Association.

C.E.O.s are tired of talking. At a recent meeting of executive speechwriters, Murray said one takeaway stood out. As one presenter put it, “ Less is more, in ’24.”

Murray highlighted the sentiment in the Professional Speechwriters Association’s May newsletter: “Folks will increasingly keep their leaders out of the spotlight,” he wrote, describing the current moment as one in which “even formerly anodyne messages encouraging employees to vote” sound partisan to some.

That approach marks a drastic evolution from when executives made statements in droves after the death of a Black man, George Floyd, in police custody in 2020. “They didn’t get rewarded for it,” Murray said. “They got called woke. One group said they didn’t go far enough, one group said they went too far, and now they’re definitely in a phase of, ‘We comment on things that absolutely have essential bearing on our company and our business.’”

Campuses reflect an era of division. Before the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, the war in Gaza and the campus protests that followed, the City University of New York School of Law announced that it would have no commencement speaker . The school had faced a backlash when speakers at previous commencements focused on their support for Palestinians. After protests on campus related to the war, and the ensuing controversy over how school administrations handled them, Columbia University announced that it would cancel its main commencement ceremony altogether . And across the country, as many ceremonies carried on without disruption, several have been interrupted by protests and walkouts , sometimes targeted at the school’s choice of speaker .

Michael Franklin, the executive director of the industry association Speechwriters of Color, said speechwriters are increasingly preparing for disruption. “A new part of the package this year, in addition to the remarks that they would deliver, is also having some alternative transition remarks in the event of a disruption,” he said.

Some executives prefer chats to speeches. The chief executive of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, accepted an honorary Ph.D. at Georgia Tech this year, but did not give a commencement speech. Instead, at a special ceremony in January, he delivered a five-minute speech , left the stage to remove his graduation robes, and returned for a “fireside chat” with the school’s president, Ángel Cabrera.

“They love fireside chats,” Murray said of executives. “They want to sit down, have a chummy conversation, look charming, be charming. Say short things, kind of stick to their key messages.”

Kate Linkous, an executive vice president in Edelman’s corporate reputation practice, said she’s also noticed more conferences replacing their keynote speeches with fireside chats. “The commencement speech is one of our last few brilliant examples of a long-form speech,” she said.

Will the commencement address as we know it survive? One potential outcome is that the address just becomes boring, as speakers focus on avoiding controversy. “Whenever you’re in a position of trying to sand something down, you end up appealing to no one and saying nothing,” said Ben Krauss, a former speechwriter for Joe Biden and other politicians and the chief executive of the speech writing and strategic communications firm Fenway Strategies. His advice?

“People have been protesting commencements for as long as there have been commencements,” he said. “If someone interrupts, someone interrupts. That’s just kind of a natural feature of human communication.” — Sarah Kessler

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

The N.C.A.A. signed a potentially historic settlement. The college sports association and several top conferences agreed to a $2.8 billion pact that would pay student athletes for playing. If approved by a federal judge, the plan would be the biggest step yet in erasing the idea that college stars are amateurs — but skeptics worry the plan doesn’t resolve a number of major issues.

Nikki Haley opened the door for her donors to back Donald Trump. The former Republican presidential hopeful said she would vote for her onetime rival in November, seemingly making peace with a man she had castigated during the Republican primary. That could give cover to deep-pocketed benefactors like the hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin to give money to Trump, whose campaign fund-raising has trailed President Biden’s. Stephen Schwarzman, the Blackstone chief, said this week that he would back Trump .

Scarlett Johansson took on OpenAI. The actress, who played an A.I. assistant in the movie “Her,” accused the tech start-up of using a sound-alike voice for the latest version of its ChatGPT chatbot — after she turned the company down. The dispute reflected eroding trust in OpenAI and its chief, Sam Altman; Hollywood’s conflicted relationship with A.I.; and Silicon Valley’s continued tolerance of start-ups asking for forgiveness instead of permission .

The Justice Department sued Live Nation over its dominance of live entertainment. The antitrust suit accused the Ticketmaster parent of maintaining an illegal monopoly by locking venues and artists into exclusive contracts and threatening retribution to rivals. It’s the latest instance of the Biden administration’s crackdown on what it sees as unfair competition, and comes despite Live Nation’s endorsement of some aspects of the White House’s fight against so-called “junk fees.”

The F.D.I.C.’s chair said he planned to resign. Martin Gruenberg agreed to step down after losing Democratic support over what reports said was a toxic culture at the banking regulator. Republicans said that Gruenberg, who said he’ll leave when a replacement is in place, should go immediately, as Democrats seek to preserve their majority at an agency tasked with drafting tough new banking regulations.

The bankruptcy blame game

Red Lobster made news this week when it blamed its all-you-can-eat shrimp deal for helping tip the company into bankruptcy . The claim was part of what’s known as a first-day declaration, a legal filing that companies in bankruptcy make to explain why they ran into trouble.

These declarations are written carefully and strategically. A company “usually wants to present itself as the honest but unfortunate debtor,” Adam Levitin, a bankruptcy professor at Georgetown University Law Center, told DealBook. “It’s in bankruptcy for reasons that were not about bad management, but about just things out of its control in the world.”

That’s why so many companies that file for Chapter 11 protection cite macroeconomic trends or quirky exogenous factors, despite other issues being more culpable. In Red Lobster’s case, the company was dealing with expensive leases and the same challenges facing other casual dining companies.

The unlimited shrimp promotion — the brainchild of Red Lobster’s former chief, reportedly in conjunction with Thai Union, the chain’s parent — is unlikely to have been a primary cause for the filing. “The dollar value is not big enough, and it’s a little too indirect,” Vincent Buccola, a bankruptcy professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, told DealBook. (His guess: Red Lobster’s current management may be trying to imply the threat of future litigation against Thai Union. Thai Union, for its part, has denied the accusation. )

But it got DealBook thinking: What other unexpected factors have companies blamed for their bankruptcies?

Low-carb diets: The parent company of Twinkies and Wonder Bread, Interstate Bakeries, filed for bankruptcy in 2004, citing low-carb eating as a cause as the Atkins diet became all the rage. That said, the company also carried about $1.3 billion in debt, and had been criticized by analysts for a lack of innovation and high labor costs. The company filed for bankruptcy again in 2012 .

Twinkies ultimately had a happy ending: The investment firm Apollo Global Management and the financier Dean Metropoulos acquired the Hostess brand name and took that business through one of the most successful corporate transformations in recent memory. After going public in 2016, Hostess was sold to J.M. Smucker for $5.6 billion last year.

A helium shortage: Party City filed for bankruptcy in January 2023, blaming in part a global helium shortage driven by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. But the retailer carried about $1.7 billion in debt and was still reeling from the pandemic, which had disrupted supply chains and put a damper on festive gatherings. (Its founder also blamed the store’s high prices ).

Party City emerged from bankruptcy in October after eliminating about $1 billion in debt and closing less profitable stores.

People fleeing Manhattan: When the luxury home goods retailer ABC Carpet & Home filed for bankruptcy in 2021, among the factors it cited was the “mass exodus of current and prospective customers leaving the city” during the pandemic. But the company had also been fighting with its landlord and fallen behind on its digital presence , which became a problem once the pandemic hit.

The retailer, which still operates its multicolor Manhattan store, later emerged from bankruptcy and was sold to an investment firm .

The numerical case for giving Elon Musk a big payday

Tesla this week pressed its case to investors that they should again approve Elon Musk’s $56 billion pay package at the electric auto maker’s annual meeting next month. The company said the compensation plan, which a judge struck down in January, did what it was supposed to do: motivate Musk to lead the company to significant growth. That included Tesla’s total shareholder return, which vastly outstripped those of other tech giants — the so-called Magnificent 7 — from March 2018, when shareholders first approved Musk’s pay deal , to the end of 2023.

“A deal should be a deal: Stockholders approved the plan. Elon hit the targets. We should hold up our end of the deal,” the company wrote in its presentation.

It’s worth noting that Tesla this year is the worst performing Magnificent 7 stock, down roughly 28 percent as of Friday’s market close.

Thanks for reading! We’ll see you Tuesday.

We’d like your feedback. Please email thoughts and suggestions to [email protected] .

Sarah Kessler is an editor for the DealBook newsletter and writes features on business and how workplaces are changing. More about Sarah Kessler

Lauren Hirsch joined The Times from CNBC in 2020, covering deals and the biggest stories on Wall Street. More about Lauren Hirsch

Michael de la Merced joined The Times as a reporter in 2006, covering Wall Street and finance. Among his main coverage areas are mergers and acquisitions, bankruptcies and the private equity industry. More about Michael J. de la Merced

The Campus Protests Over the Gaza War

News and Analysis

​Harvard said that it will no longer take positions on matters outside of the university , accepting the recommendations of a faculty committee that urged the school to reduce its messages on issues of the day.

​Weeks after counterprotesters attacked a pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of California, Los Angeles, the university police have made the first arrest related to the attack .

​​A union for academic workers in the University of California system announced that an ongoing strike challenging the system’s handling of pro-Palestinian demonstrations would extend to two more campuses , U.C.L.A. and U.C. Davis.

The Battle Over College Speech:  ​University demonstrations over the war in Gaza have reignited the debate over campus speech, and have led to a rethinking of who sets the terms for language in academia .

Making Sense of the Protests:  In the weeks leading up to graduation, our reporter spoke with more than a dozen students at Columbia University and Barnard College about how the campus protests had shaped them .

A Complex Summer:  Many university leaders and officials may be confronting federal investigations, disputes over student discipline  — and the prospect that the protests start all over again in the fall.

A New Litmus Test:  Some Jewish students say their views on Zionism — which are sometimes assumed — have affected their social life on campus .