The Grammaring Guide to English Grammar with Exercises

Reporting questions

When we report questions, there is no inversion of the subject and auxiliary in the reported clause (the word order is the same as in statements) and we do not use a question mark.

Yes/no questions

REPORTING CLAUSE + IF/WHETHER-CLAUSE (WITH NO INVERSION)

When reporting a yes/no question, we use if or whether:

Alex:

Have you booked tickets for the concert?

Alex was wondering

if/whether I had booked tickets for the concert

.

Jasmine:

Is there a wireless network available in the library?

Jasmine inquired

if/whether there was a wireless network available in the library

.

Peter:

Is it cold outside?

Peter wants to know

if/whether it is cold outside or not

.

Peter wants to know

whether or not it is cold outside

.

Wh-questions

REPORTING CLAUSE + WH-CLAUSE (WITH NO INVERSION)

When we report a wh-question, we repeat the original question word (who, what, when, where, how etc.) in the reported clause:

Rebecca:

Where do you live?

Rebecca asked me

where I lived

.

Tim:

Who are you waiting for?

Tim wanted to know

who I was waiting for

.

A wh-clause can be used to report exclamations:

Ivan:

How funny!

Ivan exclaimed

how funny it was

.

Examples of reporting verbs used to report questions:

ask, inquire, know, remember, want to know, wonder

We can use an indirect question after other reporting verbs when we are not reporting a question but we are talking about the answer to a question:

I've told you before

why I don't like shopping malls

.

She didn't say

what time she would be back

.

When we want to make a question more polite, we often introduce the sentence with expressions such as Could you tell me...?, Do you know...? etc. and continue with an indirect question:

Could you tell me

how I can get to the railway station

?

Do you know

if this shop sells second-hand records

?

Can you remember

what time the play starts

?

Related topics:

SAY, TELL and ASK

Question word + TO-infinitive