"No grammatical rules have sufficient authority to control the firm and established usage of language. Established custom, in speaking and writing, is the standard to which we must at last resort for determining every controverted point in language and style." -- Hugh Blair
(Quoted in Williams, Joseph: Style. Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace. New York: HarperCollins College Publishers, 1994, p11)

A while back, a correspondent took issue with our ‘that’ sentence on our "Using 'which' and 'that'" page. He said it was incorrect, not because of any problem with the ‘that’s, but because it should read: He said that that ‘that’ that that man had used was wrong.

We sat up at this, because it raised an issue we were acutely aware of: the sequence of tenses in reported speech. How often have we noticed that people don’t seem to know the rules! And, of course, our correspondent is saying that the ‘that’ sentence breaks them. (Not that we wrote it, we hastily disclaim; I remember being confronted with a similar one as an eight-year-old in school.)

So, is he right or not? We thought we’d take a look at it.

To remind the uninitiated and the rusty, the tense of the verb in a statement is, as a general rule, shifted back in time in reported speech. The present tense becomes past because, at the time it is reported, the statement is in the past and the situation reported must therefore be in the past, too (although it may also continue into the present). Therefore, I often visit Paris becomes He said he often visited Paris.

In the same way, I will visit Paris becomes He said he would visit Paris, where ‘would’ is the past tense of ‘will’; and I have visited Paris becomes He said he had visited Paris, where ‘had’ is the past tense of ‘have’.

But what do we do with I visited Paris? Do we say, as our correspondent would suggest, He said he had visited Paris? That’s the same tense as in the previous example, but we’ve started with a different statement.

The difference between the two statements is that the first – I have visited Paris – is in the perfect tense, and the second – I visited Paris – is in the simple past. The perfect is used for a completed action that has happened recently or has a continuing relevance to the present: You would say I have visited Paris when you’ve just arrived back; or, if you went a long time ago, to imply that the visit is part of all the experience that forms your world view. Similarly, I have learned Teeline implies that you can, to some extent at least, read and write shorthand.

The simple past, on the other hand, is used for a single act in the past and does not further place that action in time or relate it to the present. I visited Paris could refer to yesterday or 50 years ago; and I learned Teeline doesn’t imply that you have retained any of it.

When the perfect tense is shifted back in time in reported speech, it becomes the pluperfect; as the name suggests, the ‘more past than past’. As we pointed out above, this is achieved by changing the ‘have’ to ‘had’. When the simple past is shifted back in time, the ‘had’ has to be introduced: I visited Paris becomes He said he had visited Paris. But is this necessary?

Traditional grammar says yes: the perfect and simple past both become pluperfect. But anyone who pays attention to language will notice that, in common use, the simple past is often reported in the simple past.

We did some investigation and found strong evidence that this is becoming more accepted. Some sources stick to the rules we learned in school; others state them, but point to changing usage. The American Heritage Book of English Usage(1), cited at bartleby.com/64/C001/068.html, says the simple past or pluperfect may be used, and points to statistics suggesting the pluperfect is falling out of use in this and similar situations. In The Oxford Reference Grammar(2), the examples given use the pluperfect, but we’re also told it can be replaced by the simple past.

To us, this seems natural. When you report I have visited Paris, you have to say He said he had visited Paris; ‘had’ is the past tense of ‘have’. But in reporting I visited Paris, there seems to be no need. You could argue that, logically, there is a need; the visiting took place before the saying, and is therefore ‘more past than past’. However, we know the visiting took place before the saying; and doesn’t introducing the pluperfect wipe out the (possibly significant) distinction between an original perfect and simple past? What do you think?

Two other issues commonly arise in connection with reported speech. One is a tendency to retain the original tense when the action reported is known to still occur, or to have not yet occurred, at the time of reporting: He said the sun rises in the east; she said the national debt will be eliminated in 2005. Some people accept this as standard; others resist it.

And then there’s the question, raised by one of our correspondents, of whether you need the word ‘that’ after the verb of reporting. It’s traditional to have it, and there is one in the ‘that’ sentence; but could the sentence just as well read He said that ‘that’ that that man used was wrong? (Of course, it wouldn’t then be as perplexing!)

As with so many language issues, the jury is out.

(1) The American Heritage Book of English Usage: a practical and authoritative guide to contemporary English. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1996
(2) Greenbaum, Sidney: The Oxford Reference Grammar. Oxford University Press, 2000