11-1 Indirect Questions

When making questions, students often get confused with the words, what, which, and whose.

• What, which, and whose are usually used with nouns.
• Which and what are often both possible, with little difference in meaning.
• Which is preferred when the speaker is thinking of a limited number of choices.
• Whose is used when asking about possession.

How can be used with adjectives and adverbs:

We use indirect questions to make questions sound softer or more polite:

When we use this grammar, we do not use inversion. This means we do not place the auxiliary verb before the subject.

In fact, the word order of an indirect question is the same as in positive sentences:

In Past Simple and Present Simple questions, did, do, and does appear in direct questions. Just like positive sentences, indirect questions do not need these auxiliaries:

The last example above may be confusing as do is also the main verb of the sentence. Remember, in indirect questions or positive sentences, we do not need do, does or did as auxiliary verbs. Do not forget that do can be used as a main verb:

If there is no question word in your question like when, where, who, what, why, etc., it is because the question is a "yes" or "no" question. For these questions, we use if or whether in indirect questions: