Direct and Indirect Speech/Direct and Indirect Narration

Direct and Indirect are two types of narration, in which the same sentence is narrated in two different ways according to the proper rules of each narration. Each narration has its own set of rules, that must be followed.

Direct Narration

“Direct Narration” is usually consisted of two parts.

1. Reporting Speech
2. Reported Speech

“Reported Speech” is separated from the “Reporting Speech” by a comma (,) and a set of commas (“). It means that Direct Narration consists of two sentences.

The sentence which is outside the inverted commas is called the Reporting Speech and the sentence that is inside of the inverted commas is called the Reported Speech.

The verb of the Reported Speech is called the “Reported Verb” and the verb of Reporting Speech is called the “Reporting Verb”.

Indirect Speech

The “Indirect Narration” consists of only one long Simple Assertive Sentence and is obtained by following some “General Rules for Changing Direct Speech into Indirect Speech”.

General Rules for Changing Direct Speech into Indirect Speech

To change Direct Speech into Indirect Speech, the following rules must be followed:

1. Cut the comma and the set of commas (that separated the Reporting Speech and Reported speech) with the word “that”.
2. Either change the word “said to” of Reporting Speech into the word “told” or keep it as “said to”.
3. Put the dot (.) at the end of the sentence to make the Indirect Speech a Simple Assertive Sentence.
4. Change the Pronouns according to “Pronouns Changing Rules”.
5. Change other words according to “Other Words Changing Rules”.
6. Change the verb and helping verb according to Rule # 1, Rule # 2, and Rule # 3 of “Changing in Tenses”.