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Direct and Indirect Speech

Direct and Indirect Speech

Course modified date: 15 يونيو 2022

Learn about direct and indirect speech, what they are, how to punctuate direct speech and how to use both types of speech. This course is ideal for intermediate learners.

Introduction

If we think of story-writing as a specific example, then speech in writing is when one character says something to another character.
By using special types of punctuation – which we will look at in more detail a little later in the session – we can tell when something should be read as speech just from the punctuation marks that surround it.
 
However, not all speech will be marked like this, which is why we need to know the difference between direct speech (which does have marks) and indirect speech (which does not have marks) as they both perform very different jobs in written, and sometimes spoken, English.

Direct speech is when the speech of one person is repeated in exactly the same way that the person said it, with no changed made by the person who is relaying the speech.
Direct speech will always use speech marks to show that it is something that has been said by another person, and it will often come with a speech tag to explain how the speech was said as well.
 
For example: “I really don’t want to go out this evening,” said James.
In the above example there is a speech tag before the word I and after the word evening.

Here we know that this is exactly what James said because the speech is written inside dialogue markers, and we have our speech tag – ‘said James’ – so we know that it was James himself who said this.

You will learn 
  1. Understand what direct speech is
  2. Know how to punctuate direct speech
  3. Understand what indirect speech is
  4. Know when and how to use both types of speech


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