How does written English normally handle quotations and attributions?
We know, of course, that when the speaker’s exact words are quoted, those words should be duly set off by quotation marks. The attribution is then provided either before, after, or within the statement depending on the writer’s judgment:
The manager said, “Our president has decided and he’s someone who rarely changes his mind.”
“Our president has decided and he’s someone who rarely changes his mind,” the manager said.
“Our president has decided,” the manager said, “and he’s someone who rarely changes his mind.”
No matter where the attribution is placed in such quoted statements, the statement retains the speaker’s exact words and the tense of the verbs used. We don’t change anything in what was actually said. Take this example:
“Our company is
in preliminary talks to acquire Canada’s Niko Resources and French energy firm Maurel and Prom,” a
spokesman for the refiner Indian Oil Corp. (IOC)
said on Friday.
But the treatment would be different if the quoted material is paraphrased with attribution; that is, when the statement is reported not with the speaker’s exact words. In print journalism, in particular, this practice is indicated by doing away with the quotation marks that normally set off quoted material from its attribution.
Now, when quotation marks are dropped in this manner, there could be confusion as to which tense should control the time framework of the whole sentence—that of the attribution, or that of the quoted paraphrased material. Thus, when using paraphrased quoted statements, many news service agencies and print media follow the so-called sequence of tenses rule, which prescribes that when the attribution comes after or within that paraphrased statement, the tenses in the quoted statement need to be retained:
Indian Oil Corp. (IOC)
is in preliminary talks to acquire Canada’s Niko Resources and French energy firm Maurel and Prom,
a spokesman for the state-run Indian refiner
said on Friday.
On the other hand, when the attribution comes ahead of the paraphrased quoted statement, the tense of the attribution acquires control over the tenses in the rest of the statement:
A spokesman for the state-run refiner Indian Oil Corp. (IOC)
said on Friday that the company
was in preliminary talks to acquire Canada’s Niko Resources and French energy firm Maurel and Prom.
Formally, the sequence of tenses rule requires that the tenses in such attributed paraphrased statements be rendered as follows:
(1) The present tense should become past tense (“is”/”are” to “was”/”were”). If, say, a beauty contest winner tells the news reporter, “I am overwhelmed,” the reporter would write it this way:
She said [that]
she was overwhelmed.
(2) The future tense should become conditional (“will” to “would”). If, say, an irate beauty contest loser tells the reporter, “I will appeal the judges’ decision,” the reporter would write it this way:
She said [that]
she would appeal the judges’ decision.
(3) The past tense should become past perfect (“was”/”were” to “had been”), except when the time element is indicated. If, say, a beauty contest chair tells the newspaper reporter, “We were scandalized by the loser’s complaint,” the reporter would write it this way:
She said [that]
they had been scandalized by the loser’s complaint.
However, the past tense is retained when the action’s time frame in the quoted material is specified:
She said [that]
they were scandalized when the loser filed a complaint yesterday.
(4) The future perfect becomes conditional (“will have + past participle” to “would have + past participle”). If, say, the beauty contest chair tells the newspaper reporter, “I will have to review the scores first before deciding,” the reporter would write it this way:
She said
she would have to evaluate the scores first before deciding.
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This is a revised version of a two-part instructive lecture that I wrote for The Manila Times
sometime in 2005.This essay, 2120th of the series, appears in the column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in the Campus Press section of the October 13, 2022 digital edition of The Manila Times
, ©2022 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.Read this lecture online in
The Manila Times:
Dealing with quotations and attributions – 1(Next week:
Dealing with quotations and attributions – 2) October 20, 2022
Visit Jose Carillo’s English Forum, http://josecarilloforum.com. You can follow me on Facebook and Twitter and e-mail me at j8carillo@yahoo.com.
