direct/indirect speech

English as a Second Language English Vocabulary, Grammar and Idioms
1

Direct speech:
1.‘If it rains this afternoon it will be too wet to play the match tomorrow.’ the captain said.
Indirect speech of 1st sentence:
The captain said (that) if it rained that afternoon it would be too wet to play the match the following day.

Direct speech:
2.'I was intending to do it tomorrow,‘he said ,'but now I don’t think I’ll be able to.’
Indirect speech of 2nd sentence:
He said (that) he had been intending to do it the next day and but then he didn’t think he would be able to.

My questions are:
1.‘tomorrow’ in direct speech should change to ‘the following day’ or to ’ the next day’? -or both are equivalent?
2. is it corrrect that ‘but now’ changes to ‘but then’?
3.is ‘(that)’ after said is an alternative?, can or cannot be?

many thanks

2

  1. “the next day” and “the following day” both work. (Of course, in a real-life situtaion, if the information is still current then you can leave “this afternoon”, “tomorrow” etc. unchanged.)

  2. I think it’s best to leave as “but now”, at least in your example. “but then” would normally be understood to mean “some time after he had the original intention” rather than “at the time he spoke”, which is the required meaning. (By the way, you have a superfluous “and” in your sentence.)

  3. “that” is optional. Generally speaking, the more formal the text, and the more long and complicated the remainder of the sentence, the more I would be inclined to use “that”.