Subj : to be or not to be that i To : Ardith Hinton From : alexander koryagin Date : Mon Apr 16 2018 17:18:29 Hi, Ardith Hinton! I read your message from 14.04.2018 16:40 about to be or not to be that i. ak>> ----- Beginning of the citation ----- ak>> The engineering firm building the bridge at Florida International ak>> University had ordered Thursday that the cables be tightened, Mr. ak>> Rubio, a Republican, said in a late Thursday tweet. "They were ak>> being tightened when it collapsed," he said. ak>> ----- The end of the citation ----- ak>> Any reported speech can be transferred back into direct speech: ak>> ----- ak>> Mr. Rubio said in a late Thursday tweet, "The engineering firm ak>> building the bridge at Florida International University ordered ak>> Thursday that the cables be tightened". ak>> ---- AH> Theoretically I suppose you could do that, if indeed those were the AH> exact words Mr. Rubio used. But somebody else's account of what Mr. AH> Rubio said might be a condensation, a simplification, &/or a AH> personal interpretation. Well, IMHO, if reported speech distorts idea, there is no guarantee that direct speech is correct either. It depends on the person who writes. AH>> Suppose I order some widgets from the XYZ Company, and I'm AH>> told "They should be at your door by 8:00 PM Friday." At 9:00 PM AH>> on Friday I might say to Dallas "The XYZ Company told me those AH>> widgets should be here by now." I see no need to change the verb AH>> tense there if the widgets have not yet arrived. ak>> When your words are in quotation marks it is direct speech, no ak>> changes are needed. In reported speech you remove quotation marks: ak>> At 9:00 on Friday I said... that the XYZ Company _had told_ me ak>> those widgets should have been here by then. AH> Uh-huh. Now you are telling the story in the past tense, whereas I AH> used the present tense... so you must use "had told" WRT what was AH> said earlier. I see you've grasped the idea I was trying to get AH> across, and by using the word "that" as a subordinating conjunction AH> you've left no doubt in anybody's mind as to whether I was AH> reporting directly or indirectly on what the XYZ Company said. If there is no quotation marks in your report it means it is 100% indirect speech. AH> The subordinating conjunction "that" may be... and often is... left AH> out, however, particularly in colloquial speech. As a Canadian I AH> take pride in the crisp efficiency of the English language when I AH> see e.g. a cereal box where it takes half again as much space to AH> say the same thing in French. OTOH, I see how people can get a bit AH> too carried away with brevity sometimes. If you don't include the AH> conjunction, some readers may incorrectly assume that all they have AH> to do is put quotation marks around what I allegedly said to AH> duplicate it. :-) As for "that", we probably also should take in mind that quotation marks are visible only in written speech. So, indeed, "that" can really help well the listener to recognize the reported speech beginning when he hears it. AH> ... The language is flexible enough to allow you to say, e.g., AH> that Susie said (that) the moon is made of green cheese... or that AH> Ardith has told readers in the E_T echo (that) the city where she AH> currently resides is located in the southwestern corner of Canada. AH> There's where the rule of common sense takes precedence IMHO over AH> the grammatical neatness of the textbook. :-) You, nevertheless, tell that there is a grammatical neatness of the textbook. ;-) Should it mean that according this neatness your sentence should be (in my report): "Ardith has told readers ...(that) the city where she currently resides WAS located in the southwestern corner of Canada." I see that "was located" sounds a bit funny, but should a teacher teach that a textbook can be ignored sometimes? ;-) Bye, Ardith! Alexander Koryagin ENGLISH_TUTOR 2018 --- Paul's Win98SE VirtualBox * Origin: Quinn's Post - Maryborough, Queensland, OZ (3:640/384) .