Think of a conversation between two people. The words used by a speaker are in direct speech. In writing, this is shown by single (‘…’) or double (“…”) quotation marks and other punctuation marks. These quotation marks are also called opening (‘…) and closing (…’) inverted commas.
If someone reports the words of the speaker to another person, then this becomes reported or indirect speech. In changing direct into indirect speech, there may be changes in the tense of the verb, and in other parts of speech.
Now consider the following pairs of direct and indirect speech.
