The two ways of paraphrasing quoted statements in reportage

Last week, I posted here a three-part essay, “How to handle reported speech,” that I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in 2009. I discussed in that essay how the operative verb in a reported statement must be rendered to grammatically match the tense of the reporting verb, and what grammatical changes must be made in the reported statement itself to conform to the sense of reported speech.

This time I am posting a two-part companion essay, “Dealing with quotations and attributions,” which I wrote in 2005 to explain how today’s news service agencies as well as newspapers and magazines present paraphrased quoted statements. As we all know, paraphrasing routinely does away with the quotation marks that set off a quoted statement from its attribution, but this question arises: Which tense should control the time framework of the whole sentence—that of the attribution, or that of the quoted paraphrased material?

The prevailing practice in media is to use the sequence of tenses rule, in which the tense in the paraphrased statement is retained when the attribution comes after or within that statement; when the attribution comes ahead of the paraphrased quoted statement, however, the tense of the attribution gains control over the tenses in the rest of the statement. In contrast, some media organizations use the so-called exceptional sequence rule, which generally retains the tense used in the speaker’s exact words no matter where the attribution falls in the paraphrased quoted material.

The two-part essay that follows discusses precisely how these two ways of dealing with paraphrased statements are done. (July 9, 2011)

  

Dealing with quotations and attributions

Part I:

A reader from India, Jhumur D., has raised a very interesting question by e-mail about the proper use of the tenses in indirectly quoted or paraphrased statements:

“I came across your articles through Google and since then have been its regular reader. We all know that the past tense should be used for indirect narration if the verb [in the attribution] is in the past tense, except for universally true facts. But these days I regularly see the opposite. Can you please explain why this sentence from a reputable news agency doesn’t follow the grammar rule?

State-run Indian Oil Corp. (IOC) is in preliminary talks to acquire Canada’s Niko Resources and French energy firm Maurel and Prom, a spokesman for the Indian refiner said on Friday.

“It should have been ‘was in preliminary talks.’”

Offhand, my answer is that the news agency is correct in using the present tense in the sentence in question. To understand why this is so, however, we first have to review the basics of how written English normally handles quotations and attributions.

We all know that when the exact words of a speaker are quoted, those words should be duly set off by quotation marks. The attribution is then provided either before or after the statement, but depending on the writer’s judgment, it may also be placed within the quoted statement whenever appropriate:

The manager said, “Our president has decided and he’s someone who rarely changes his mind.”
 “Our president has decided and he’s someone who rarely changes his mind,” the manager said. “Our president has decided,” the manager said, “and he’s someone who rarely changes his mind.”

No matter where the attribution is placed in such quoted statements, the statement retains the exact words and the tense of the verbs used by the speaker. We are not at liberty to change anything in what was actually said.

The quoted material presented by Jhumur is something different, however. It has been paraphrased; in other words, it doesn’t use the speaker’s exact words. In print journalism, this practice is indicated by doing away with the quotation marks that normally set off quoted material from its attribution.

Now, when quotation marks are dropped in this manner, there could be confusion as to which tense should control the time framework of the whole sentence—that of the attribution, or that of the quoted paraphrased material. This is why when using paraphrased quoted statements, many news service agencies as well as newspapers and magazines follow the so-called sequence of tenses rule.

Under this rule, when the attribution comes after or within that statement, the tenses in the quoted statement are retained. This is why the quoted paraphrased statement presented by Jhumur uses the present-tense “is in preliminary talks” instead of the past-tense “was in preliminary talks.” On the other hand, when the attribution comes ahead of the paraphrased quoted statement, the tense of the attribution acquires control over the tenses in the rest of the statement.

The tenses used in the original verbatim statement will then change as follows:

(1) The present tense becomes past tense (“is”/”are” to “was”/”were”). For instance, if a beauty contest winner tells the news reporter these exact words, “I am overwhelmed,” the reporter would write it as follows: She said [that] she was overwhelmed.

(2) The future tense becomes conditional (“will” to “would”). For instance, if an irate beauty contest loser tells the reporter these exact words, “I will appeal the judges’ decision,” the reporter would write it as follows: She said [that] she would appeal the judges’ decision.

(3) The past tense becomes past perfect (“was”/”were” to “had been”), except when the time element is indicated. For instance, if a beauty contest chair tells the newspaper reporter these exact words, “We were scandalized by the loser’s complaint,” the reporter would write it as follows: She said [that] they had been scandalized by the loser’s complaint. However, the past tense is retained when the time element of the action in the quoted material is given: She said [that] they were scandalized when the loser filed a complaint yesterday.

(4) The future perfect becomes conditional (“will have + past participle” to “would have + past participle”). For instance, if the beauty contest chair tells the newspaper reporter these exact words, “I will have to review the scores first before deciding,” the reporter would write it as follows: She said she would have to evaluate the scores first before deciding.

Some publications don’t follow this rule, however. Instead, they use the so-called “exceptional sequence rule,” which generally retains the tense used in the original quotation no matter where the attribution is placed in the quoted paraphrased material.

We will discuss this other rule in detail in the next column. (December 20, 2005)

Part II:

We saw in the preceding essay that when quoted statements are paraphrased or don’t use the speaker’s exact words, the convention in written English is to drop the quotation marks that set off the quoted material from its attribution, after which the traditional “sequence of tenses” rule determines the tense of the verbs in the paraphrased quoted material.

This rule is easy to apply when the attribution comes after or within the paraphrased quoted statement. For instance, if a political analyst tells a newspaper reporter these exact words, “Some senators are vehemently against changing the Constitution and I think they’ll fight tooth and nail to defeat the proposed amendments,” the reporter might make a quoted paraphrase in either of two ways:

(1) Some senators are strongly opposed to charter change and will fight the proposed amendments in every possible way, the political analyst said.
 (2) Some senators are strongly opposed to charter change, the political analyst said, and they will fight the proposed amendments in every possible way. The tenses in the speaker’s exact words are retained.

When the attribution comes ahead of the paraphrased quoted statement, however, the tense of the attribution gains control over the tenses in the paraphrase, and the sequence of tenses rule is then applied as follows: present tense becomes past tense, future tense becomes conditional, past tense becomes past perfect, present perfect becomes past perfect, and future perfect becomes future conditional.

Thus, in the earlier example, the quoted paraphrase will change the tenses in the verbatim quotation this way:

The political analyst said [that] several senators were strongly opposed to charter change and would fight it in every possible way.

As previously pointed out, many news service agencies, newspapers, and magazines use the sequence of tenses rule for paraphrased quoted statements, but others consider this rule confusing and misleading. They prefer to use the “exceptional sequence” rule, which generally retains the tense used in the speaker’s exact words no matter where the attribution falls in the paraphrased quoted material. The example given earlier will thus be rendered in this paraphrased quoted form: The political analyst said [that] several senators are strongly opposed to charter change and will fight it in every possible way.

Proponents of the exceptional sequence rule argue that paraphrased quoted statements formed by using it are clearer and more logical and immediate than those formed by using the traditional sequence of tenses rule. True enough, by not having to change the tenses in paraphrased quoted statements, the exceptional sequence rule eliminates a procedure that can sometimes confuse even the writers themselves and possibly mislead the reader.

We can better appreciate the relative virtues of the two rules by applying each to a statement about a situation that doesn’t change so quickly. Assume, for instance, that a provincial governor told a reporter these exact words yesterday: “I have a green card but I don’t intend to live in the U.S. upon my retirement.” A quoted paraphrase of this verbatim statement using the traditional sequence of tenses rule will change its tense from present to past:

The provincial governor said [that] he had a green card but didn’t intend to live in the U.S. upon retiring.

 In contrast, a quoted paraphrase using the exceptional sequence rule will retain the present tense:

The provincial governor said [that] he has a green card but doesn’t intend to live in the U.S. upon retiring. Both versions are grammatically correct, and present no logical problems with their differing use of the tenses.

We must be aware, though, that even under the exceptional sequence rule, some situations arise in which changing the tense of the verbatim quoted material becomes absolutely necessary. For instance, assume that a city mayor told a reporter of a daily newspaper these exact words yesterday: “I am not feeling well so I will not attend the party caucus tonight.”

In a news report for today’s papers, the following paraphrased quoted statement using the exceptional sequence rule will no longer hold logically:

The city mayor said [that] he is not feeling well and will not attend the party caucus last night.

This is because by the time the report is read, the city mayor might have already gotten well and might have even attended the party caucus eventually. Thus, there’s no choice but to use the past tense, as in the case of the sequence of tenses rule:

The city mayor said [that] he was not feeling well and would not attend the party caucus scheduled last night.

Indeed, no matter what rule we use in writing paraphrased quoted statements, we must reflect in a logical way the effect of the passage of time between the utterance of the quoted statement and its being read in the printed form. (December 26, 2005)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, December 20 and 26, 2005 © 2005 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.