At the end of Part 1 of this lecture last week, we pointed out that when the attribution comes
after or within the paraphrased quoted statement, the sequence of tenses rule is easy to apply.
For instance, if a political analyst tells a newspaper reporter these exact words, “Some senators are vehemently against changing the Constitution and I think they’ll fight tooth and nail to defeat the proposed amendments,” the reporter might write the quoted paraphrase in either of two ways:
Some senators are strongly opposed to charter change and will fight the proposed amendments in every possible way,
the political analyst said.
or:
Some senators are strongly opposed to charter change,
the political analyst said, and they will fight the
proposed amendments in every possible way.
The tenses in the speaker’s exact words are retained.
As previously pointed out, however, some news service agencies and publications find the sequence of tenses rule for paraphrased quoted statements rule confusing. They thus use
the exceptional sequence rule, which generally retains the tense used in the speaker’s exact words no matter where the attribution falls in the paraphrased quoted material.
The example given earlier will thus be rendered in this paraphrased quoted form:
The political analyst said [that]
several senators are strongly opposed to charter change and will fight it in every possible way.
Exceptional sequence rule proponents argue that paraphrased quoted statements formed that way are clearer and sound more logical than those formed by using
the traditional sequence of tenses rule. Indeed, by not changing the tenses in the paraphrased quoted statement, the exceptional sequence rule does away with a procedure that can sometimes make the writer lose his train of thought.
To better appreciate the relative virtues of the two rules, let’s apply each of them to a statement about a situation that doesn’t change so quickly. Assume, for instance, that a provincial governor told a reporter these exact words yesterday: “I have a green card but I don’t intend to live in the U.S. upon my retirement.”
A quoted paraphrase of this verbatim statement using the traditional sequence of tenses rule changes its tense from present to past:
The provincial governor said [that]
he had a green card but didn’t intend to live in the U.S. upon retiring.
However, a quoted paraphrase using the exceptional sequence rule retains the present tense:
The provincial governor said [that]
he has a green card but doesn’t intend to live in the U.S. upon retiring.
Both renditions are grammatically correct and their differing tense usage doesn’t create logical problems.
Here’s a caveat, though: Even under the exceptional sequence rule, some situations arise in which changing the tense of the quoted material becomes absolutely necessary. For instance, assume that a city mayor told a daily newspaper reporter these exact words yesterday: “I am not feeling well so I will not attend the party caucus tonight.”
In a news report for today’s papers, the following paraphrased quoted statement using the exceptional sequence rule will no longer hold logically:
The city mayor said [that]
he is not feeling well and will not attend the party caucus last night.
This is because by the time the report is read, the city mayor might have already gotten well and might have even attended the party caucus eventually. Thus, the best choice is to render the paraphrased statement in the past tense following the sequence of tenses rule:
The city mayor said [that]
he was not feeling well and would not attend last night’s scheduled party caucus.
This way, no matter which of the two rules is used in writing paraphrased quoted statements, the paraphrased statement can reflect in a logical way the effect of the passage of time between its having been uttered and its being seen in printed form by the reader.
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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, 2121st of the series, appears in the column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in the Campus Press section of the October 20, 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 – 2(Next week:
The age of imprecision) October 27, 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.
