Rules for Changing Indirect to Direct Speech

Narration change from Indirect to direct speech follows the reverse rules of changing the narration from Direct to Indirect speech.  So, if you attentively learn the rules of narration change from Direct to Indirect, it would be easy to change narration from Indirect to Direct speech.

Rule 1

To convert indirect speech to direct speech, we have to add punctuation marks at proper places. 

Reported clause of the sentence should be put inside a quotation mark. A comma also have to be added. e.g.

  • Indirect: Ritu said that she was eating rice.
  • Direct: Ritu said, “I am eating rice.”
Rule 2

In case of changing narration from indirect to direct speech, conjunction such as that, if, whether, should be omitted. e.g.

  • Indirect: Mohan asked if I was okay. 
  • Direct: Mohan said, “Are you okay?”

Here the conjunction ‘if’ is omitted. 

Rule 3

While changing indirect to direct speech, the tense of the sentence changes. The tense of the reported clause is restored to the tense in which the original speaker has spoken the words. e.g.

  • Indirect: Priya said that she liked reading books.
  • Direct: Priya said, “I like reading books.”
Rule 4

 In this case, the sentence does not always ends with full stop. While changing indirect to direct speech, the ending punctuation mark depends on the type of sentence. It can be an exclamatory mark in case of exclamatory sentence or a question mark in case of interrogative sentence. e.g.

  • Indirect: Bipasha asked Rakesh what he was doing. 
  • Direct: Bipasha said to Rakesh, “What are you doing?”
  1. Indirect: She exclaimed with horror that the sight was very horrible.
  2. Direct: She said, “What a horrible sight!”
Rule 5

Pronouns, time, place also changes accordingly from indirect to direct. e.g.

  1. Indirect: Father told me to go home then.
  2. Direct: Father said, “Go home now.”

Here ‘then’ changes to ‘now’.

  1. Indirect: Rupa said that she read poetry.
  2. Direct: Rupa said, “I read poetry.”

 ‘She’ pronoun is replaced by ‘I’.