Direct and Indirect NarrationDirect speech and Indirect Speech are also known as Quoted speech and Reported speech. If we want to report the words or thoughts of another person then we have two options to do this:
i) Directly quoted his/her conversation known as Direct speech
ii) Indirectly explain what he/she said without quoting his/her words known as Indirect speech
Direct Speech or Quoted Speech: Direct speech repeats, or quotes, the exact words spoken by the speaker. When we use direct speech in writing, we place the spoken words in between inverted commas "" and write what the speaker said without changing them.
Examples of Direct speech:
The teacher says "Earth revolves round the sun?"
She said to her husband, "Oh darling, I am so lucky."
"Hurra! we have won the mathc" they cried.
Indirect Speech or Reported Speech: Indirect speech doesn't repeat or use quotation marks to enclose what the speaker said. Reported speech is usually used to talk about the past event and report what the speaker said without quoting his/her exact words, so we the change of tense of the words in necessary and the conjunction ‘that’ is added before the Indirect Statement.
The basic rules of changing direct speech into indirect speech include:
i) Remove comma and inverted commas.
ii) Add "that" between the reporting and reported speeches.
iii) Change the first letter of reported speech into small letter except "I"
iv) Change the verb and helping verbs of the reported speech according to the pronouns
v) Change tenses and other necessary changes according to the rules
Examples of Indirect speech:
She asked for a cup of tea.
The teacher said he would teach English online tomorrow.
He said his name was Saifullah. English to Urdu Dictionary