By Direct speech, Present tenses

Let us recast the sentence in direct speech, that is, you are speaking to Mark, "When you arrive (simple present tense is most suitable here - I wonder you can use any other tense), we shall/will go out for dinner."When you turn that into an indirect speech, the sentence will become,...

I walked to the nurse desk and asked for a bottled water and one of the nurses told me that I couldn't take any liquid before surgery. Instead, she told me to get some rest. I walked back to my room and told my mom. Mom said, "Sounds like she knows what she's talking about."...

Sorry for starting it again, but I am still not quite sure in this case. I was taught that when talking about universal truths or general knowledge, the present tense should be used in indirect speech. By the way, I suppose you are just making up an example quickly. I think you know the sun IS...

I'm not a native speaker but I am pretty sure the version with the present tense "I though I know" sounds quite odd. You could hear something similar when "I know" is reported as direct speech, or is not really linked to "I thought":There was this girl, you know,...

Hi Viceidol,For reported / indirect speech, we convert the present tense to the past tense as shown below:will, wouldcan, couldmust, had toshall, shouldmay, might Therefore, #2 is correct.

Yoong Liat wrote: The teacher said, "The world is round." In reported speech, it would be The teacher said that the world is round. One of my English usage books says it can be reported as The teacher said that the world was round. ( was consistent with said in tense) What do you think? ...

Hi, Im not a guru here, but I still would like to join you in this.While I was waiting in line, the woman ahead of me asked if I'd heard about the president's being shot. (past progessive. Action in progress at specific past time & second action interrupted it.) I told her she must/ might be...

The correct version is I said I didn't want to live with her. There should be the consequence of tenses and tha past tense and the present tense in one sentence don't go together.

With all the wanderings of this thread, I am not sure of the question. Regarding these sentences: "i wish i could tell you what this is" (this present unidentifiable object) "i wish i could tell you what this was" (the same object) "i wish i could tell you how i feel" ...

CalifJim wrote: This is not a mandatory rule. It's something which is often done (thus, to me, optional), per Swan. Which part is not mandatory? I may have misunderstood, but I'm assuming the rule you are referring to is: will cannot be used in a when clause where when is an...