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Listening to a song, I've met one interesting sentence with indirect speech, but it's a song. An author can use whatever words he needs to get into rhyme, so I want to ask if this is right to write like in that case. There're two examples (the first one was in the song, the second one is that how I think would have been right):

So I said this is the worst day of my life.

So I said it was the worst day of my life.

As I believe, this is right to use one tense back (didn't know how to say it more appropriately, but I hope you understand what I meant) when we have something to do with an indirect speech, although there're always exceptions of any rule, and we have to work with context. I reckon the first example isn't that bad if we're speaking about the day that isn't over yet. However, anyone can be mistaken.

And, please, accept my apologies for my non-grammatical speech.

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Maxyeet
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  • You are correct. It's called "backshifting" of tenses for reported speech. (I would use that — not it — for this in the reported version.) But the song, as you said, can do what it wants, including leaving the punctuation out of a direct quote like So I said: "This is the worst day of my life." – Tinfoil Hat May 07 '20 at 02:39
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    But, also, this is contradictory: "An author can use whatever words he needs to get into rhyme, so I want to ask if this is right to write like in that case." You can't say it's up to the author, and then immediately follow that by asking if the author is right. – Jason Bassford May 07 '20 at 03:00
  • Yes and if this is from a song, how can we know what punctuation the writer put on "So I said this is the worst day of my life" ? – Robbie Goodwin May 07 '20 at 21:41
  • Thank y'all, I guess I got it! – Maxyeet May 09 '20 at 21:23

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