Speech

Speech

Here are four ways of conveying what people say.

Straightforward quoted speech

Bob Roberts said, “Today’s pension reforms are a step in the right direction.”

This is the easiest and most straightforward way of showing what someone said. It is introduced with a comma (after the “said”) and the first word of the speaker’s sentence is capitalised. The full stop goes inside the speech marks because that is where the speaker ended the sentence. Straightforward words like “said” are the best way of introducing this kind of speech, because they are almost invisible – they don’t distract the attention like some of the alternatives (e.g. “argued”, “riposted”, “animadverted”).                   

You can vary your sentences by putting the “Bob said” bit in different places:

“Today’s pension reforms”, said Bob Roberts, “are a step in the right direction.”           

“Today’s pension reforms are a step in the right direction,” said Bob Roberts.  

These examples also demonstrate how punctuation in speech works. In the first, the comma is outside the speech marks to show that there was no pause in what Bob actually said. That’s because punctuation goes inside the speech marks if it is part of what the speaker said, and outside the speech marks if not. If you put the “said Bob” bit at the end, the final full stop of his sentence is replaced by a comma. If the sentence ends with a question or exclamation mark, don’t replace this with a comma (“… direction!” said Bob or “…direction?” said Bob).                                                                  

Introducing a quote with a colon                        

Bob Roberts agrees: “Today’s pension reforms are a step in the right direction.”

This is a useful way of introducing speech: give an interpretation and then use a colon to introduce the speech that backs it up.                                                               

Incorporating a quote in your own sentence

Bob Roberts has spoken in support of the pension reforms, calling them “a step in the right direction”.                                                                                 

Here we’re borrowing the speaker’s words and making them a part of our own sentence. You should put quotation marks around the words you are borrowing (and make sure that the reader understands from whom you’ve borrowed them) but they aren’t distinguished by capitals or introduced by any punctuation. And because we’re borrowing the words, the full stop belongs to our sentence and not the speaker’s, so it goes outside the quotation marks.                                                                      

Reporting speech without quoting                      

Bob Roberts said that the pension reforms were a step in the right direction.

This is reported, rather than directly quoted, speech. The thing to watch here is tense – whether we’re talking about the past, the present or the future. When you report speech, your sentence has two parts: the bit dealing with the speaker (“Bob Roberts said that…”), and the bit dealing with what they said (“…the pension reforms were a step in the right direction”). Because some combinations of tenses sound odd, it is generally best to keep the first part of the sentence in the same tense as the second. If you do have to mix tenses – to show that the pension reforms were made significantly before or after Bob spoke – the table below shows you how. Take a beginning from the left and complete it with one of the phrases to its right marked B, S or A.

Past

Bob Roberts had said that

B

the pension reforms had been a step …

or

S

the pension reforms were a step …

Bob Roberts said that

A

the pension reforms would be a step …

 

Present and future

Bob Roberts says that

B

the pension reforms were a step …

or

S

the pension reforms are a step …

Bob Roberts will say that

A

the pension reforms will be a step …

 

B = before he spoke               S = around the same time                  A = after he spoke

 

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