Narration Shortcuts Chart

Narration

Direct speech	Speaker	Reporting verb	Reported speech
	He	Said,	“I am unwell.”
Indirect speech	Reporter	Reporting verb	Linker	Reported speech
	He	said	that	he was unwell.

Direct speech	Indirect speech
a.  Present (am/is/are/has/have)	Past (was, were, had)
b.  Present Indefinite (I do)	Present Continuous (I am doing)
c.   Present Continuous (I am doing)	Past Continuous (I was doing)
d.  Present Perfect (I have done)       Past Indefinite  (I did)	Past perfect (I had done)
e.  Past Continuous (I was doing)	Past perfect continuous (I had been doing)
f.   Present perfect continuous      (I have been doing)	Past perfect continuous (I had been doing)
g.  Future (I shall/will do)	Future (I would/should do)

Direct speech	Indirect speech
now	then
ago	before
today	that day
tonight	that night
tomorrow	the next day/ the following day
yesterday	the previous day
last year	the previous year
here	there
hence	thence
this	that
these	those
thus	that way/so
come	go

General Rules	Special Rules
Change of tense	Change of Assertive sentence
Change of pronoun	Change of Interrogative sentence
Change of expression of time and place	Change of Imperative sentence
Change of vocative case/Parenthesis	Change of optative sentence
	Change of exclamatory sentence

Prepared by: Nurul Amin