Choosing a Verb Tense When Summarizing Speech When you are
telling a story, you may what to summarize someone else’s
speech. Although you can use just about any verb tense to do so,
in English different tenses create a different experience for
your readers and listeners. Here is an example that uses past
tense: Flipping his hair over each of his three shoulders, the
alien told us about the explosion on his planet. The gas of
three rocket tanks caught fire and destroyed the spaceport
terminal, he said. He went on to explain that almost everyone on
the planet was affected, including the volleyball team, which
sustained significant losses. All their courts, he said, were
covered with rubble, and they forfeited the intergalactic
tournament. The alien’s story is summarized speech. He is not
being quoted directly. If he were, the writer would have
inserted some of his exact words: Oh, the humanity! he cried. In
the previous summarized speech, the verbs are all in past tense.
Although rare, it’s possible to summariz