{"id":73404,"date":"2020-03-24T09:30:54","date_gmt":"2020-03-24T09:30:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/?p=73404"},"modified":"2020-03-24T09:30:54","modified_gmt":"2020-03-24T09:30:54","slug":"say-vs-tell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/say-vs-tell\/","title":{"rendered":"Say vs. Tell"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>Say\u00a0<\/b>refers to any kind of speech. It is most often used without a personal object.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>She\u00a0<b>said\u00a0<\/b>that she would be late. (NOT She said me that \u2026)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If we want to put a personal object after\u00a0<b>say<\/b>, we use\u00a0<b>to.<\/b><\/p>\n<h3>Tell<\/h3>\n<p><b>Tell\u00a0<\/b>is used to mean \u2018instruct\u2019 or \u2018inform\u2019. After\u00a0<b>tell<\/b>, we usually say who is told.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>She\u00a0<b>told me\u00a0<\/b>that it was my last chance.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Tell<\/b>\u00a0can be followed by\u00a0<b>object + infinitive<\/b>.\u00a0<b>Say\u00a0<\/b>cannot be used like this.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I\u00a0<b>told him to be\u00a0<\/b>careful. (NOT I said him to be careful.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Tell\u00a0<\/b>is used without a personal object in a few expressions. Examples are:\u00a0<i>tell the truth, tell a lie, tell a story\/joke.<\/i><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Do you think she is\u00a0<b>telling the truth?\u00a0<\/b>(NOT Do you think she is saying the truth?)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Direct and indirect speech<\/h3>\n<p>Both\u00a0<b>say\u00a0<\/b>and\u00a0<b>tell<\/b>\u00a0are used with direct and indirect speech. Note that\u00a0<b>say<\/b>\u00a0is more common than\u00a0<b>tell<\/b>\u00a0with direct speech.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u2018Be careful,\u2019 he\u00a0<b>said.\u00a0<\/b>(OR \u2018Be careful,\u2019 he\u00a0<b>told me.\u00a0<\/b>)<\/li>\n<li>\u2018This is your last chance,\u2019 she\u00a0<b>said.\u00a0<\/b>(OR \u2018This is your last chance,\u2019 she\u00a0<b>told me.\u00a0<\/b>)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Note that\u00a0<b>tell<\/b>\u00a0is only used to mean \u2018instruct\u2019 or \u2018inform\u2019;\u00a0<b>say<\/b>\u00a0can refer to any kind of speech.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>She\u00a0<b>said,\u00a0<\/b>\u2018Thank you.\u2019 (NOT She told him, \u2018Thank you.\u2019)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Say\u00a0refers to any kind of speech. It is most often used without a personal object. She\u00a0said\u00a0that she would be late. (NOT She said me that \u2026) If we want to put a personal object&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[251],"tags":[2219,2222,2221,2220],"class_list":["post-73404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grammar","tag-say","tag-say-or-tell","tag-say-vs-tell","tag-tell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73404"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73405,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73404\/revisions\/73405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}