Directions: Select the correct direct form of the given sentence.

Father asked the mechanic how much he had to pay for the repairs.

Question

Question

This question was previously asked in

SSC Steno Previous Paper 15 (Held on: 22 Dec 2020 Shift 1)

Answer 1

The correct answer is Father said to the mechanic, "How much have I to pay for the repairs?".

Key Points

The given sentence is an indirect speech.
The basic rules for changing or converting indirect speech into direct speech:
- The commas, inverted commas are added. 'Asked' is replaced by 'said to'.
- The full stop (.) in indirect speech, changes into the question mark (?).
- The third person 'he' will be changed into the first person 'I'.
- The past simple tense format 'Subject + V2 (had) + Object' will be changed into the present simple tense format 'Subject + V1 (have) + Object'.
From the following rules, we get the correct sentence as- option 4.

Additional Information

We can see that option 1 and option 4 looks alike but they are different. There is a difference of full stop and the question mark. The usage of full stop or period makes a sentence a simple sentence and the usage of question mark makes the sentence an interrogative sentence.
As the indirect speech tells us that the usage of "how" makes this sentence an interrogative sentence hence, we need to use a question mark.
This is an official question asked in SSC Stenographer you can check the link. (SSC Stenographer Previous year Paper)