Lesson video

Hi, I'm Mr. Buckingham, and I'm really glad you've joined me today for our second lesson on speech punctuation.

Now we're going to be learning some new rules today, which will help us to add some variety to the direct speech we use in our writing.

Now, there's lots to learn, but I'm going to be here to help you through the whole lesson.

Let's make a start.

Today's lesson is called "Speech Second: Inverted Commas and Punctuation Rules" from our unit "Apostrophes and Speech Punctuation." By the end of today's lesson, we're going to be able to accurately punctuate a speech second sentence.

Here are today's keywords.

My turn, your turn.

Direct speech, speech second sentence, reporting clause, inverted commas, and speech first sentence.

Now, some of those keywords will be familiar from our previous lesson about speech first sentences, but the rules are a little bit different this lesson.

Let's look at those keywords in some more detail.

We write direct speech to show that a character's speaking out loud in a text.

A speech second sentence is one where we include direct speech after the reporting clause.

And the reporting clause, if you remember from the last lesson, is the part of a sentence that tells the reader who said the speech and how.

Inverted commas are a pair of punctuation marks that signal that show the direct speech to the reader.

And a speech first sentence, which we practised last lesson, is one where we include direct speech before the reporting clause.

Let's look at our lesson outline.

We're going to start by looking at the rules for punctuating speech second sentences.

And we're going to practise writing speech second sentences in the second half of our lesson.

So let's get to work learning these new rules for speech second sentences.

So we've seen that direct speech is used to show that a character is speaking out loud.

So far we've looked at speech first sentences, which look like this.

"Well done everyone," smiled Mr. Clarke happily.

We've got the direct speech before the reporting clause like this.

We've opened our inverted commas.

We've used our capital letter to start the direct speech.

We've got our direct speech there inside the inverted commas.

We have our closing punctuation, either an exclamation mark, a question mark, or a comma.

We close our inverted commas.

Then we have the reporting clause which closes with the full stop.

So what's the purpose of that reporting clause, "smiled Mr. Clarke happily." Pause the video and decide what its purpose must be.

Great work.

It's to show who's speaking, Mr. Clarke.

And to show how they're saying it.

He's saying it happily, and we can tell he's smiling.

It's not to show what they're saying.

That's the direct speech, which comes before in this speech first sentence.

Good job.

So we've seen that in a speech first sentence.

The direct speech begins with a capital letter every time.

But the reporting clause doesn't unless it starts with a name.

"Well done everyone," smiled Mr. Clarke happily.

has a capital letter at the start of the direct speech, but it has a lowercase S at the start of the reporting clause because smiled is not a name.

In this example, we flipped the reporting clause around and we've said, "Mr. Clarke smiled happily." This time we've still got the capital letter at the start of the direct speech, but we've got a capital letter for Mr. Clarke because that's a name.

And in this type of sentence, with the speech first, the direct speech ends with some closing punctuation, either an exclamation mark, a question mark, or a comma.

And the reporting clause ends with a full stop.

So we can see that comma here and the full stop at the end of the reporting clause.

So which piece of punctuation is missing in each of these three examples? Look really carefully for any punctuation you think might have been left out.

Pause the video and have a go.

Well done, great effort.

Let's check those.

So in the first one we can see that missing punctuation is the full stop at the end of the reporting clause.

In B, we can see what's missing is the inverted commas after the direct speech, after the words that Andy actually said.

And in C, we can see we are missing some closing punctuation, that question mark at the end of the question which Jun asks.

Really well done if you found those.

Okay, now the exciting part.

We're going to start learning about another way of showing direct speech.

And another way of showing direct speech is to use what we call a speech second sentence.

Here are some examples.

Jacob sighed, "Are we nearly there?" The teacher yelled, "That's enough!" Aisha muttered, "I just want to go home." Can you see how in these examples, these speech second sentences, we have the reporting clause at the start of the sentence.

And we have the direct speech second now.

And that's why we call it a speech second sentence.

Now, this is gonna be really useful to add some variety to the way we write speech in our writing, but there are some new punctuation rules that we need to learn for these speech second sentences.

The reporting clause now comes at the start of the whole sentence so it has to have a capital letter.

And you can see those here.

We're starting with our capital letter, CL.

Then we've got the reporting clause.

And you can see that now it's always followed by a comma because it's no longer at the end of the sentence.

In a speech second sentence the reporting clause comes first so it's followed by a comma.

So if you look at our diagram, we are building up, we've got the capital letter, the reporting clause, and then the comma.

So where should a comma and a capital letter be added to make this a speech second sentence? The policeman sighed sadly, "I don't like the look of this." Decide where the capital letter and the comma should go.

Pause the video.

Well done.

Let's take a look.

So this is where the sentence begins so we need to have a capital letter there.

So we've got a capital T now for "The policeman sighed sadly." And this is where the reporting clause ends so we must now have a comma there.

And we've put the comma after sadly.

So we've got our capital letter, the reporting clause, and the comma at the end of the capital letter.

Now there are still inverted commas around the words the character has said out loud.

We can see those here.

So we can see in the direct speech we have our inverted comma opening.

We have the speech and the inverted comma closes.

Now this time, just like before, the direct speech still starts with a capital letter each time.

We can see that here.

And we can put now the reporting clause at the start.

So we can see most of our structure here.

We start with a capital letter at the start of the reporting clause, a comma after the reporting clause.

We open our inverted commas, a capital letter for the start of the direct speech.

We say the direct speech, and we close the inverted commas when the person has finished speaking.

So where should a capital letter and inverted commas be added to make this a speech second sentence? Andy's mum begged, "Please play safely when you're in the park!" Pause the video and decide where your new capital letter and inverted commas should go.

Well done.

We can see these are the words that were said out loud.

Please play safely when you're in the park.

So the inverted commas should go around those words.

And we've added our capital letter at the start of that direct speech as well.

So just like in our diagram, we've got the capital letter, the reporting clause, and the comma.

We've opened our inverted commas, put our capital letter at the start of the direct speech, and then closed our inverted commas when Andy's mom has stopped speaking.

In a speech second sentence, the end of the direct speech marks the end of the sentence.

So we can see here, this is the end of the sentence.

This means it can't now end with a comma.

When we had speech first, it often ended with a comma.

Now it can't because when it's speech second, that end of the direct speech is the end of the whole sentence.

And we know we can't end a sentence with a comma.

If you look at this example, I can see I'm flipping it around.

We've got speech first.

"I just want to go home," muttered Aisha.

Flipping to speech second.

Aisha muttered, "I just want to go home." In the first example, we could have a comma because that wasn't the end of the sentence.

But now we are changing to a full stop because the direct speech is now at the end of the sentence.

So if we look at the range of punctuation we can now use at the end of our direct speech when we've got speech second, we've got an exclamation mark, a question mark, and a full stop now.

And we can no longer use a comma.

So where we thought we'd use a comma in our speech first, we are now using a full stop.

So we can now see the full structure for writing a speech second sentence.

Let's take a look.

Here's our example.

Sam whispered anxiously, "Is it safe?" We've got our capital letter, our reporting clause, our comma.

We've got our inverted commas, we've got our next capital letter.

We've got the speech, we've got our closing punctuation, and we've got our closing inverted commas.

Find the mistake in the punctuation of each speech second sentence that I've written here.

You're gonna have to look very closely for these errors.

So pause the video and have a try.

Okay, let's take a look.

In A, I can see something's missing at the end here.

It needs to have some punctuation.

I can see Alex is emotional here.

He's crying out.

So an exclamation mark is the most appropriate closing punctuation.

In B, something's missing here.

Miss Ofoedu asked kindly is the reporting clause, so it needs to have a comma after it.

And in the last example, something's gone wrong at the end.

That full stop should be inside the inverted commas because that's the end of what the shopkeeper has said.

Really well done if you spotted those tiny mistakes.

If we can master those, we're really showing people that we can use direct speech accurately.

So for our first task this lesson, I want you to rewrite each sentence, adding the inverted commas, capital letters, and other punctuation marks that are needed to make these a speech second sentence.

And remember, you can refer to the diagram at the bottom to help you.

Pause the video and have a try.

Well done.

Fantastic effort.

Let's take a look at these together.

If we look at the first one, we can see we've used our capital letter at the start.

We have our comma after our reporting clause.

We've got our inverted commas, our capital letter to start the direct speech.

And at the end of our direct speech, we have our closing punctuation, which here is a question mark.

If I show you the others, you can see they all follow the same structure.

We've started with a capital letter at the beginning of the reporting clause.

We've got our comma after the reporting clause.

We have our inverted commas followed by another capital letter.

And before we close our inverted commas, we must have that closing punctuation.

For number two, I've used an exclamation mark.

It could have been a full stop there as well.

For number three, I've used an exclamation mark again.

Again, you could argue that could be a full stop.

Sometimes the punctuation could be different things.

You've just got to think how much emotion do I think was said in that direct speech? For number four, I've definitely used a full stop there because I don't think there's too much emotion in that announcement.

And for number five, I've gone for a full stop as well at the end.

But have a think whether you think the emotion is strong enough to use an exclamation mark each time.

Really well done if you managed to get that structure correct.

You've done a great job.

Let's keep going.

Okay, we are now ready to try and write some speech second sentences using those rules that we've learned.

Let's have a go.

So when we're writing a speech second sentence, we've got some decisions to make just like we did for speech first.

We've got to decide who's speaking, that goes in the reporting clause.

We've got to decide what they say, that's the speech.

We've got to decide how they say it.

And we've got to decide how to punctuate it depending on what is being said and how.

We can use synonyms for said, actions and adverbs to show how something was said in the reporting clause, just like we did with speech first.

So synonyms for said might be things like muttered, whispered, declared, stammered.

Our adverbs might be things like softly, calmly, rudely, aggressively.

And some actions might be with a frown, with a shake of her head, without looking up.

And the words we select will show the emotion the character is feeling as they speak.

So I wonder if you can match the reporting clause to the most appropriate direct speech for the emotion we're showing in these sentences.

Pause the video and match them up.

Okay, let's have a go.

Miss Ofoedu asked with a frown, sounds like a negative sentence.

So I think it matches with, are you sure this is your best work.

Alex stammered nervously.

That's going to match with this one.

And then Lucas chuckled with a smile.

He's happy, he's positive.

So it must be, "I loved this movie when I was little!" And look how our reporting clauses are followed by a comma because we're trying to make speech second here.

Really well done if you managed that.

Okay, let's put this into practise.

Laura wants to help Mr. Clarke sharpen the pencils.

She's saying, "Can I help please, sir?" We need to think, who's speaking It's Laura.

What's she saying? "Can I help please, sir?" How does she say it? Maybe she asked politely.

Maybe she did it with a smile.

And how should we punctuate it? Well, this is a question, so we need to use a question mark.

Let's see how it could look.

Laura asked with a smile, comma.

There's my reporting clause telling me who's speaking and how they say it, with a smile she asked.

And then I've got my comma after the reporting clause.

Then I'm gonna open my speech marks.

I'm going to say, "Can I help please, sir?" That's what Laura said, with a capital letter to start.

Then I did my closing punctuation, my question mark.

And that's how I'm going to punctuate a question.

and I'm gonna finish with my closing inverted commas.

So if we wrote it out as a speech second sentence, it would look like this.

Laura asked with a smile, "Can I help please, sir?" Okay, now your turn.

Jacob wants to join in with Laura.

So he says, "Let me help you, Laura." I want you to ask yourself the following questions to help you decide how you might make this into a speech second sentence, I want you to think, who's speaking? What's he saying? How does he say it? And how should we punctuate it? Pause the video and have a think about the answers to those four questions.

So, who's speaking? It's Jacob.

What's he saying? "Let me help you, Laura." How do you think he might say it? Maybe you said he offered kindly, he said with a grin.

And how should we punctuate it? Well, it's not a question and it's not a strong emotion so it's going to be a full stop on this occasion.

Because remember, speech second comes at the end of a sentence so we can't use a comma here.

So now I want you to think, how could we show Jacob's words in a speech second sentence? So using your ideas now let's see if you can put those into a speech second sentence following the steps in the diagram to help you.

Pause the video and have a try.

Okay, let's have a look.

It might look something like this.

Jacob offered kindly, "Let me help you, Laura." We've got our capital letter at the start of the reporting clause.

We've got the reporting clause telling us who's speaking and how.

We've got our comma at the end of the reporting clause.

We've opened our inverted commas.

We've got a capital letter on the first word that Jacob said.

We've got our speech, the words he actually said.

We've finished with a full stop because that's no strong emotion and it's not a question.

And we've finished with our inverted commas to show the end of what Jacob was saying.

Hopefully yours looked a little like mine.

And really well done if you managed that.

Okay, Sophia has a question for Mr. Clarke.

"When I finish my work, can I go to the book corner?" Let's think about how we could write this.

This is a longer piece of direct speech, but we punctuate it in exactly the same way as for the shorter ones we've done already.

We start with the capital letter and work through the same structure.

It could look like this.

Sophia asked politely, comma, "When I finish my work, can I go to the book corner?" We've followed the exact same steps.

Here's Mr. Clarke's reply.

"Of course you can, but you're not finished yet." I wonder if you can think, how did Mr. Clarke say this? What punctuation might be needed at the end of the direct speech? And think of a speech second sentence using this idea.

So you've got a lot to think about.

I wonder if you can pause the video and decide how might this speech second sentence look.

Okay, here's an idea.

It might look like this.

Mr. Clarke sighed frustratedly, comma, "Of course you can, but you are not finished yet." Just like before, we've got our capital letter to start, our comma after our reporting clause, our capital letter at the start of the speech.

And here I've used an exclamation mark as my closing punctuation to show that Mr. Clarke is really frustrated with Sophia at this point.

Okay, for our final task this lesson, I'm going to show you some speech bubbles.

And for each one I want you to write a speech second sentence, using the correct punctuation and starting with an appropriate reporting clause.

Remember that reporting clause will say who said it and how they said it.

Aisha's saying, "What a mess." Alex says, "Let's go to the park." And Jen says, "Can I join in please?" So pause the video and decide what would be an appropriate speech second sentence for each of these speech bubbles.

Have a go.

Okay, let's check our sentences.

First of all, have you used the correct punctuation for speech second? Have you got this structure for your speech? Then I'd like to check, does your reporting clause include who is speaking and a synonym for said and maybe an adverb or an action to show how it was said by that person? Pause the video and have a go.

Well done.

Great checking.

So here are some examples of what you could have written.

Yours will look different, but your direct speech should look the same as mine.

And you should have that comma after your reporting clause and that capital letter at the start.

Aisha shouted angrily, "What a mess!" Definitely you want an exclamation mark there because Aisha is showing a strong emotion.

Alex suggested with a smile, "Let's go to the park." No strong emotion here, so I've put a full stop at the end.

Jun nervously asked, "Can I join in too, please?" This is a question so there must be a question mark at the end there.

Really well done if you've managed to get all that punctuation and all those words in the correct position.

Okay, let's summarise what we've learned today.

We learned that in a speech second sentence, the reporting clause comes first followed by the direct speech.

We've learned that the reporting clause starts with a capital letter and ends with a comma in a speech second sentence.

We've learned that the reporting clause tells us who is speaking and how they're speaking.

And we know that the direct speech is placed inside inverted commas.

It starts with a capital letter and it ends with closing punctuation.

Now, we've learned a lot of new rules here, but you've now learned two different ways of presenting speech in your writing.

So this is really going to help you to write dialogue, that means speech, in an interesting way that adds to your stories and makes your characters really come alive.

Brilliant work if you've managed to get all the way through this.

And I can't wait to see you in a future lesson.

Well done.