Post History
Grammatical formalisms (as opposed to fundamental grammar) do not apply in dialog. Dialog is a report of what someone actually said. In fiction, what characters actually say and how they say it is ...
Answer
#4: Attribution notice removed
by
System
·
2020-01-03T20:41:51Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/25080 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T05:42:27Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/25080 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
by
System
·
2019-12-08T05:42:27Z (almost 5 years ago)
Grammatical formalisms (as opposed to fundamental grammar) do not apply in dialog. Dialog is a report of what someone actually said. In fiction, what characters actually say and how they say it is part of their characterization. What matters is, does this speech reflect who the character is. If you are writing an excessively mannered character, you might write excessively mannered speech for them. But a typical person would not make any distinction between the two examples you give. I suspect that most people would say the latter, since it is an indirect quotation (using some of the same words and phrasing without formally quoting what was said). But to answer your question, no, none of these rules apply within dialog.
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2016-10-29T16:04:05Z (about 8 years ago)
Original score: 4