How to report a speech

There are two ways of reporting a speech. The first is to use the exact words of the speaker. In this case, quotation marks should be used to indicate what the speaker said.

The second method is to paraphrase what the speaker said. In this case, you use your own words to report what the speaker said. This gives you more flexibility in reporting a speech.

In each case, the reporter is expected to follow some rules. Let’s look at direct speech first. In this case, the reporter can use two styles. In style one, the reporter uses excerpts from the speech in full. This happens when the statements made by the speaker are very striking.

Further, the following points must be kept in mind while using direct speech:

• Use neutral verbs as attribution. These verbs such as said, stated or added do not impute motives. In contrast, attributive verbs like claimed, demanded, opined, queried etc give unnecessary colour to a quotation.
• Use either a comma or colon to introduce a quotation, but don’t use both.
• Place the quotation in double quote marks.
• Make sure that the first word of the quote starts with a capital letter.
• The quote should be a complete sentence.

The second style is to extract striking words or phrases from the speech. These words or phrases are those that stress key points, and are likely to have more impact than full sentences.

The rules to be followed in this case are:

•  The final quote marks must come before the comma if the phrase is used as part of the running sentence or before the full stop if the quote is used to end the sentence.
• There is no need to use a colon or comma to introduce the partial quote.
• There is also no need to start a partial quote with a capital letter.

In the case of indirect speech, also known as reported speech, the reporter summarises the main points made by the speaker. In this case, the reporter may use key words or phrases as partial quotes or report the entire speech in his own words.