Reported Speech (also called Indirect Speech) is used to communicate what someone else said, think or believe, but without using the exact words. A few changes are necessary; often a pronoun has to be changed and the verb is usually moved back a tense, where possible.
Reported speech is usually used to talk about the past, so we normally change the tense of the words spoken. We use reporting verbs like "say", "tell", "ask", and we may use the word "that" to introduce the reported words. Reported speech doesn't use quotation marks to enclose what the person said.
When reporting questions, it is especially important to pay attention to sentence order. When reporting yes/ no questions connect the reported question using "if". When reporting questions using question words (why, where, when, etc.) use the question word.
When using indirect or reported speech, the form changes. Usually indirect speech is introduced by the verb said, as in I said, Bill said, or they said. Using the verb say in this tense, indicates that something was said in the past. In these cases, the main verb in the reported sentence is put in the past. If the main verb is already in a past tense, then the tense changes to another past tense; it can almost be seen as moving even further into the past.
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