When did the speech happen? With current, repeated or recent events, the reporting verb is in the present tense. "He says he is hungry, so let's go to lunch." A habitual or repeated statement is in the present tense: "Everyone says the water is safe to drink." For reporting less immediate speech, choose the past tense.

Should a report be in present or past tense?

Use the past tense to report what happened in the past: what you did, what someone reported, what happened in an experiment, and so on. Use the present tense to express general truths, such as conclusions (drawn by you or by others) and atemporal facts (including information about what the paper does or covers).

How do tenses change in reported speech?

When using indirect or reported speech, the form changes. Usually indirect speech is introduced by the verb said, as in I said, Bill said, or they said. ... If the main verb is already in a past tense, then the tense changes to another past tense; it can almost be seen as moving even further into the past.