Reported Speech – Tense Change Rules

Change tenses according to this pattern:

• Present Simple -> Past Simple
Nick: I have a meeting every day.
Nick told me he had a meeting every day in his previous company.

• Present Continuous -> Past Continuous
Nick: I’m having a meeting.
Nick told me he was having a meeting and I didn’t want to disturb him.

• Present Perfect -> Past Perfect
Nick: I’ve had two meetings.
Nick told me he had had two meetings.

• Past Simple -> Past Perfect
Nick: I had a lot of meetings that day.
Nick told me he had had a lot of meetings that day.

• Past Continuous -> Past Perfect Continuous
Nick: I was having a meeting when you called me.
Nick told me he had been having a meeting when I had called him.

• Future Simple -> would
Nick: I will have a meeting with John.
Nick told me he would have a meeting with John.

• Be going to -> was/were going to
Nick: I’m going to have a meeting with John.
Nick told me he was going to have a meeting with John.

Note: Modal verbs also need to be changed:
can -> could
may -> might
must -> had to