Question

Indirect speech of I was polishing my shoes when he rang the bell

Answer 1

While changing a direct speech into indirect, certain rules need to be followed.

• We need to omit all inverted commas or quotation marks and end the sentence with a full stop.
• Verb in present tense needs to be changed into corresponding past tense and simple past tense to past perfect tense.
• If the quotation is a Universal Truth, it remains as it is.
• The reporting verb's tense is never changed. Eg:- Is will remain is.

In this question,

Direct: I was polishing my shoes when he rang the bell.

Indirect: My shoes were being polished by me when the bell was rung by him.