reported speech

1. seems to be more appropriate in the reported speech, changing this to that.

Hi YL

The sentence is not clear if you use 'that' rather than 'the robbery'.

Yankee
Hi YL

The sentence is not clear if you use 'that' rather than 'the robbery'.

Hi,

"Do not report this to the police," the robbers warned their victims.

1. The robbers warned their victims not to report that to the police.

2. The robbers warned their victims not to report the robbery to the police

I agree that 'this' tends to be changed to 'that' in reported speech, but in this particular sentence, it doesn't seem at all natural to me to use the word 'that' in the reported speech. If we don't use 'the robbery', then I'd also prefer 'it' to 'that' in this particular sentence.

It seems to me that the robbers' use of 'this' would only refer to 'this event' (i.e. the rob

I'd go for
The robbers warned the victim(s) not to report what happened to the police.

CJ

I like it, CJ.

We can't be sure what is meant by this in the original sentence. So 2 would be too speculative. Therefore, I would go for 1.

Hi,

I, too, feel that much of this is mere speculation. So what if we remove much of the context that is leading to speculation?

"Do not report this", Tom warned Mary.

How then would we report the actual words that were said?

I would suggest Tom warned Mary not to report that.

Best wishes, Cliv

Yoong Liat"Do not report this to the police," the robbers warned their victims.

1. The robbers warned the victim not to report that to the police.

2. The robbers warned the victim not to report the robbery to the police.

Hi Yoong,
I'd say both versions are ok. Then it depends what happened, or what you wa