Direct Speech‏‎ in English


Saying or repeating exactly what someone has said is called Direct Speech (which is sometimes also called Quoted Speech).

What a person says appears within quotation marks and is exactly what that person says:

“Live long and prosper,” said Spock.

In this example above, we are repeating exactly the words which Spock said earlier. You can contrast this with Indirect Speech‏‎ which is reporting what the person said at a later date. Sometimes words are changed here and when we write it, no quotation marks are used:

Spock said we should live long and prosper.

See Also

Punctuating Direct Speech‏‎ – how to punctuate direct speech.


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Posted in Sentence Structure.

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