Grammar and Tense

Question

I have had this questions for long time. Somebody help, please!!!

I have seen writings where verb tenses are in contradiction, eg.:
She said that her name is Jane.
I asked her whether she lives at said address...
She said that she is the owner of said property...

Shouldn't we correct these sentences to the following?:
She said that her name was Jane.
I asked her whether she lived at said address..
She said that she was the owner of said property...

Are the first three sentences grammatically acceptable?

Rover_KE · Accepted Answer

Yes, they are (but end them with a single full stop).

Rover

BillJ · Answer

Yes, they are fine.

Your sentences are examples of indirect reported speech. You're reporting something that was said by you or someone else. With reported speech, something called 'backshift' is permitted where the tense is shifted from present to past. Taking your first example, Jane's original utterance to you would have been "My name is Jane", but you would report that as "She said her name was Jane, where the present tense "is" has been changed to past tense "was", hence the term backshift.

In many cases, like yours, backshift is optional: you can keep the original present tense instead of backshifting it, so "She said her name is Jane" is just as correct as "She said her name was Jane". The same applies to your other two examples

BillJ

Grammar and Tense

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