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Example #1:

Direct speech: Tom says, "We shall discuss this tomorrow."

Book answer: He said that we should discuss it tomorrow.

Example #2:

Direct speech: Tom shows me two bullets. Tom says, "I found these embedded in the paneling."

Book answer: He said that he found them embedded in the paneling.

I think in the former (example #1) there should be that instead of it, and in the latter (example #2) there should be those instead of them. Because these changed into those and this changed into that when we changed direct speech into indirect speech. Am I right?

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  • Can you give us any more context, or are these stand-alone sentences?
    – miltonaut
    Dec 11, 2014 at 9:59
  • These are stand alone context. Currently i am learning narration. so i found these sentences in my book. Can you help me to clear my doubt?
    – starun008
    Dec 11, 2014 at 10:10

1 Answer 1

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Tom shows me two bullets. Tom says, "I found these embedded in the paneling."

Tom has just shown you two bullets. So you now know what two bullets he is talking about it - what the "these" are. So the demonstrative pronoun isn't really needed (but not wrong if you still use it) because what the "these" are is now part of the context.

He said that he found them embedded in the paneling.

This would make a bit more sense if the preceding sentence was something like:

Tom showed me two bullets.

although

Tom showed me two bullets. He said that he found those embedded in the paneling.

is not wrong, but can suggest:

  • that you are nowhere near the bullets and are recounting an event that happened some time ago, instead of something that had just happened.

  • that you were previously aware that Tom had found "something" but didn't know what it was.

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