Direct and Indirect Questions Definition and Example Sentences

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INDIRECT QUESTIONS

What Is an Indirect Question?

Indirect inquiries are a more courteous technique of requesting information or making a request. We frequently use them while asking strangers or individuals we don’t know well, such as coworkers, for information. We also use them when asking friends for favors or when we don’t want to come off as demanding.

The modal verbs can, could, and would are commonly used in English requests. These modals are often used to start a lot of indirect inquiries.

Direct question: Where is the bank?
Indirect question: Could you tell me where the bank is?

Notice how I put the verb (‘is’) after the subject (‘the bank’) in the indirect question, just like I would in a typical affirmative sentence (‘the bank is over there’), but I put the word (‘is’) before the subject (‘the bank’) in the direct question. This is known as inversion, and it is used to form direct inquiries in various verb tenses in English; however, inversion is not employed to produce indirect questions. The syntax of reported queries is pretty similar to this. Indirect questions, on the other hand, are used in a different way than reported inquiries. Indirect inquiries are a politeness tactic. They’re quite prevalent in English, particularly when speaking to someone you don’t know.

‘Yes / No’ Questions

We utilize the word ‘if’ and the word order of a typical affirmative sentence to create an indirect ‘yes/no’ inquiry. This is the same as with ‘yes/no’ questions that have been reported. On the other hand, unlike reported queries, we rarely need to ‘backshift’ (alter the tense of the verb).

Of course, most tenses use ‘inversion’ to create questions (changing the word order). You add ‘if’ and shift the word order back to a regular affirmative phrase to convert a direct “yes/no” question with inversion to an indirect question. It is not necessary to employ inversion.

‘Yes / no’ questions with tenses that use ‘do / does / did’

You could wish to compose an indirect inquiry using any verb except ‘be’ in the present simple or the past simple of any verb except ‘be’ in the past simple. ‘Do/does/did is used in this tense to ask straightforward inquiries. We need ‘if’ instead of ‘do/does/did’ when we wish to formulate indirect ‘yes/no’ queries using these tenses.

‘Wh’ Questions

To construct indirect ‘wh’ questions, we employ the question word and the word order of a typical affirmative phrase in the same manner that we do with reported ‘wh’ questions. We don’t need to invert anything. Again, unlike reported queries, we don’t generally need to ‘backshift’ (alter the tense of the verb).

Simply add ‘if’ and shift the word order back to a regular positive phrase to turn a direct question into an indirect inquiry for tenses that create questions utilizing inversion.

Here are some examples: