If the question is making an offer, request or suggestion, we can use a specific verb pattern instead, for example offer + infinitive, ask + infinitive or suggest + ing. He wondered when we could get it done by.She wanted to know if they'd brought their passports.The most common reporting verb for questions is ask, but we can also use verbs like enquire, want to know or wonder. In what, where, why, who, when or how questions, we use the question word to report the question. She asked us whether we'd finished the project yet.He asked me if I was going to the Helsinki conference.'Are you going to the Helsinki conference?' In yes/ no questions, we use if or whether to report the question. You can learn about these changes on the Reported speech 1 – statements page. We also often make changes to the tenses and other words in the same way as for reported statements (e.g. Do you like) to a statement structure (e.g. In indirect speech, we change the question structure (e.g. Indirect speech: He asked me if I liked working in sales. To do this, we can use direct speech or indirect speech.ĭirect speech: 'Do you like working in sales?' he asked. Grammar explanationĪ reported question is when we tell someone what another person asked. Indirect speech: She asked me to write it down. Indirect speech: She asked me who I'd seen.ĭirect speech: 'Could you write that down for me?' she asked.
Indirect speech: He asked me if I worked from home.ĭirect speech: 'Who did you see?' she asked. direct speech: 'Do you work from home?' he said. Practice improves these skills, as does exposure to the many verbs you can take advantage of.Look at these examples to see how we can tell someone what another person asked. Writers new to this process often struggle with sentence structure and will use the same verbs over and over, making their writing redundant and choppy sounding.
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