Reported Speech—Since?

anonymous

I have this sentence in direct speech: "I haven't talked to her since she left the town."

If I were to write this sentence in reported speech, which one would be correct?

a) He said that he hadn't talked to her since she left the town.

b) He said that he hadn't talked to her since she had left the town.

Both are correct. I'd say only that b) represents more careful English but that most people use a) because it presents no difficulty in understanding the time relationships in the sentence. The past often replaces the past perfect when the time relationships are clear without the past perfect.

anonymous

I also have the same question for direct speech:

A) He looked at his watch and was shocked that already 30 minutes had already passed since he came to the party.

B) He looked at his watch and was shocked that already 30 minutes had already passed since he had come to the party.

This one works the same as the previous one. Both are correct, and the same remarks apply.

Another factor that you should take notice of is that when the past perfect time period is already established in the sentence, you can continue with the simple past and it will be taken to represent the same time period that the original past perfect does. We seldom continue to say or write 'had', 'had', 'had', 'had' if we mention several different actions. Just the first one is usually enough.

CJ