Reporting Verb Grammar Term

by Richard Nordquist

In English grammar, a reporting verbis a verb (such as say, tell, believe, reply, respond, ask) used to
indicate that discourse is being quoted orparaphrased. Also called a communication verb.

A reporting verb may be in thehistorical present tense (to refer to an event that took place in the past) or
the literary present tense (to refer to any aspect of a work of literature).

If the identity of a speaker is clear from the context, the reporting phrase is often omitted.

EXAMPLES AND OBSERVATIONS

"'Of course he can shoot you,' Madame Wing says, and then she says to Nick, 'Aim at the knees.'"
(Timothy Hallinan, A Nail Through the Heart. Harper, 2008)
Describing his own career, Samuel Goldwyn supposedly said, "I was always an independent, even
when I had partners."
"I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, 'Where's the self-help section?' She said if
she told me, it would defeat the purpose."(George Carlin)
"'Maybe she's just worried,' Boney observed solemnly. 'She's had a lot of reason to be worried
about you, old fellow.'"
(Ken Kesey, Sometimes a Great Notion, 1964)
"The following example shows how reporters attempt to maintain the causal relationship or order
of reported events:

The man on the right talks about, ah excuse me, the man on the leftmentions that he had ah
contemplated buying a muffin but he said he didn't feel well, and the man on the right says he
also did not feel well but decided to buy the muffins anyways.

The tenses of the reporting verbs (which are [italicized]) alternate between present and past in
this example."
(Tomoko I. Sakita, Reporting Discourse, Tense, and Cognition. Emerald Group, 2002)

REPORTING VERBS WITH PARAPHRASES

"[T]he number of reporting verbs that can be employed to mark paraphrasesis around a dozen,
and they can be learned with relative ease while working on a writing assignment (e.g., the author
says, states, indicates, comments, notes, observes, believes, points out, emphasizes, advocates,
reports, concludes, underscores, mentions, finds), not to mention phrases with similar textual
functions such as according to the author, as the author states/indicates, in the author's
view/opinion/understanding, or as noted/stated/mentioned." (Eli Hinkel, Teaching Academic
ESL Writing. Routledge, 2004)

"The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in.
But said is far less intrusive than grumbled, gasped, cautioned, lied. I once noticed Mary
McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with 'she asseverated,' and had to stop reading to get the
dictionary."
(Elmore Leonard, "Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle." The
New York Times, July 16, 2001)