7.56 reporting conditional statements

When you are reporting a conditional statement, the tenses of the verbs are, in most cases, the same as they would be normally. However, they are different if you are using the simple past tense of a reporting verb, and reporting a conditional statement such as 'If there is no water in the radiator, the engine will overheat'. In this case, you can use the simple past instead of the simple present and 'would' instead of 'will' in the reported conditional statement: 'She said that if there was no water in the radiator, the engine would overheat'.

For information about conditional statements, see paragraphs 8.25 to 8.42.