Indirect questions in English: Could you tell me where the station is, and the word order that goes with it

Where is the station? is a perfectly good English sentence. Nothing is wrong with it. It is grammatical, it is clear, and if you say it to a stranger on a platform you will get an answer.

Could you tell me where the station is? gets you the same answer and makes you sound like you have been in the country a while.

That is the whole value of this structure, and it is worth being honest about it up front: an indirect question is not more correct than a direct one. It is softer. It buys a second of distance between you and the person you are interrupting. Knowing how to build one is easy; knowing when the extra softness is worth the extra words is the actual skill, and native speakers deploy it constantly without thinking about it.

What changes, exactly

An indirect question has two parts: an opener that carries the politeness, and the question clause that carries the information you want.

Could you tell me | where the station is?

The opener is the part that is genuinely a question. The clause after it is no longer a question at all: it has been demoted to an object of the opener, and objects take statement word order. So one thing changes, and everything else follows from it.

The subject goes back in front of the verb.

Read the right-hand column and notice how ordinary it looks. The station is, your name is, it starts, he left. That is exactly how you would say them in a plain statement, because grammatically that is what they now are.

Do, does and did vanish

This is the half of the rule learners forget. In a direct question with an ordinary verb, English inserts do, does or did to carry the tense and the inversion. Once the inversion is gone, that auxiliary has no job left, so it goes, and the tense moves back onto the main verb.

• When does it start? becomes Do you know when it starts?
• Where did you park? becomes Could you tell me where you parked?
• What do they want? becomes I have no idea what they want.

Leaving the do in is the tell: Do you know when does it start? is a sentence with two questions bolted together, and it is the most recognisable error in this whole topic.

Yes/no questions need if or whether

A direct question that starts with a verb has no question word to hang the clause on, so you supply one: if or whether.

• Is she ready? becomes Do you know if she is ready?
• Did you post it? becomes Could you tell me whether you posted it?
• Does the bus stop here? becomes Do you know if the bus stops here?

The word order rule is unchanged: if she is, not if is she.

If and whether are interchangeable most of the time, and in speech if is far more common. Four places prefer whether:

• before or not: whether or not it rains (you can also say if it rains or not, but not if or not it rains)
• before a to-infinitive: I cannot decide whether to go
• straight after a preposition: it depends on whether they agree
• as a subject clause or in formal writing: Whether he knew is another question.

Everywhere else, use whichever you prefer.

The openers, and how much softening each one buys

The opener does the politeness work, so choosing it is choosing a register.

Note the bottom of that table. Not every indirect question is a request. I wonder where she went and I have no idea what he meant contain embedded questions with the same word order, but they are statements about you. The grammar is identical; the social act is not.

Two of these carry a warning. I would like to know why nobody told me is grammatically a polite frame around a question and is, in practice, a complaint. And a rising, drawn-out Have you any idea what time it is? is not a request for the time. Softening machinery can be used sarcastically, and English speakers do it often.

Punctuation: question mark or full stop

Look at the opener, not at the embedded clause.

• Could you tell me where she lives**?** The opener is a question, so the sentence is a question.
• Do you know if the shop is open**?** Same.
• I wonder where she lives**.** The opener is a statement, so the sentence is a statement.
• I have no idea what he wants**.** Same.

A question buried inside a statement does not make the statement a question. If you are punctuating I wonder ... with a question mark, you have been misled by the word wonder.

When nothing changes at all

If the question word is already the subject of the clause, there is no inversion in the direct question either, so there is nothing to undo:

• Who called? becomes Do you know who called?
• What happened? becomes Could you tell me what happened?
• Which train goes to York? becomes Do you know which train goes to York?

Learners often "fix" these by adding a did that was never there. Resist it. The test is simple: if the direct question already reads as a statement, leave it alone.

Indirect questions are not reported speech

They look similar and they are often taught together, so keep the difference straight.

• An indirect question is a question you are asking, now, wrapped in a polite frame: Could you tell me where he lives? The tense stays exactly as it would be in the direct question, because nothing has moved into the past.
• Reported speech is you telling a third person what somebody else asked earlier: She asked where he lived. The reporting verb is in the past, so the tense inside backshifts.

Both use statement word order and both use if or whether for yes/no questions, which is why they get confused. The tense is what separates them. Reported speech covers the backshift in full; if you find yourself changing lives to lived in a question you are asking right now, you are on the wrong page.

For the wider pattern of when English inverts and when it does not, see inversion and word order.

Common mistakes

Ranked by how often they actually appear.

1. Keeping question word order. Could you tell me where is the station? should be where the station is. This one error accounts for most indirect questions that sound wrong.
2. Keeping do, does or did. Do you know when does it start? should be when it starts. The tense goes onto the main verb.
3. Dropping if or whether from a yes/no question. Do you know she is ready? means something completely different. You need Do you know if she is ready?
4. A question mark after I wonder. I wonder where he is? should end with a full stop. The opener is a statement.
5. If or not. I do not know if or not he is coming is wrong. Use whether or not he is coming, or move it: if he is coming or not.
6. Backshifting when you should not. Could you tell me where he lived? asks where he used to live. If he still lives there, it is where he lives.

Practice

Rewrite each direct question as an indirect one, starting with the words given. Answers are below.

1. Where is the post office? (Could you tell me ...)
2. What time does the film start? (Do you know ...)
3. Is this seat free? (Could you tell me ...)
4. Why did she leave early? (I wonder ...)
5. How much do these cost? (Do you know ...)

Answers: 1. Could you tell me where the post office is? 2. Do you know what time the film starts? 3. Could you tell me if this seat is free? (or whether) 4. I wonder why she left early. (full stop, not a question mark) 5. Do you know how much these cost?

If you want the other tool English uses to soften a question, the page on question tags covers the short tag on the end of a statement that turns a claim into an invitation to agree.