Indirect Questions

To make questions more polite in English, we add indirect phrases to the start of the direct question.

Compare:

Direct question: Where are the toilets?

Indirect question: Do you know where the toilets are?

Direct question: What do you think?

Indirect question: Can you tell me what you think?

Word Order

The word order in indirect questions is different to the word order in direct questions.

1. In direct questions, the verb to be or the auxiliary verb comes before the subject.

Where are the toilets? What do you think?

Question word + verb + subject. Question word + auxiliary verb + subject.

2. In indirect questions, the word order is the same as a normal positive sentence.

The toilets are on the second floor.

Subject + verb

Do you know where the toilets are?

Indirect phrase + question word + subject + verb?

How to Form Indirect Questions

When we change a direct question to an indirect question, we need to follow some simple rules.

1. If the direct question contains do, does or did, we omit it in the indirect question.

Direct question: What do you do?

Indirect question: Can you tell me what you do?

2. If the question contains does, omit does and change the verb to the third person –s form.

Direct question: What does he do?

Indirect question: Can you tell me what he does?

3. If the question contains did, omit did and change the verb to the past form.

Direct question: What did he do?

Indirect question: Can you tell me what he did?

4. If the question is a yes/no question, follow the rules above, but add if or whether.

Direct question: Did he call her?

Indirect question: Can you tell me if he called her?

Some typical Indirect Phrases are:

Do you (happen to) know…? Could you tell me…? Could I ask…?

Indirect statements

Indirect statements follow the same structure and rules as indirect questions.

We sometimes introduce statements with indirect phrases.

Direct Statement: I don’t like it.

Indirect Statements: I don’t know if I like it.

Typical indirect statements are: I’m not sure, I don’t know, I can tell you.

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