Question

He said, "The boys are cleaning the area now." change into reported speech​

Answer 1

Answer:He said that the boys was cleaning the area then.

Explanation:

Answer 2

Answer:

‘He said that the boys were cleaning the area then’ is a reported speech of the given sentence.

Explanation:

Direct speech refers to first person narration. This speech takes the tense of the ‘actual speech’ when it was ‘spoken’. The ‘original sentence’ spoken is within ‘quotation marks’. Indirect speech denotes the other hand in the ‘third person’. This speech follows the ‘tense of the reporting verb’.  

For its punctuation it can only use a ‘full stop’. Thus are cleaning in this sentence becomes were cleaning and now is made then.