5 exercises — practise backshifting quotes accurately when writing postmortems and incident timelines.
0 / 22 completed
1 / 22
The on-call engineer said, "The database is failing over right now." Which sentence correctly reports this in a postmortem written the next day?
"The on-call engineer said that the database was failing over at that time" is correct: the reporting verb "said" triggers backshift, so present continuous "is failing" becomes past continuous "was failing", and the time reference "right now" shifts to "at that time" since the report is written later, not in the moment. Option A keeps the present tense and "right now" unchanged, which misrepresents when the statement was made. Option C incorrectly shifts to a habitual present simple, losing the in-progress meaning. Option D mixes a present reporting verb with a backshifted past tense but keeps "right now", an inconsistent combination.
2 / 22
The SRE said, "I restarted the pod five minutes ago." Which sentence correctly reports this in the incident timeline?
"The SRE said that she had restarted the pod five minutes earlier" is correct: past simple "restarted" backshifts to past perfect "had restarted" to show it happened before the reporting time, and "ago" (relative to the speaker's moment) shifts to "earlier" (relative to a reference point in the narrative). Option B keeps both "restarted" and "ago" unshifted, which is acceptable only when reporting immediately, not in a written timeline reconstructed later. Option C incorrectly uses present perfect with "ago", which is ungrammatical since "ago" requires a specific past time frame. Option D uses an unconjugated base form "restart", which is not valid past reporting.
3 / 22
The team lead said, "We will roll back the deployment tomorrow." Which sentence correctly reports this a week later in the postmortem document?
"The team lead said that they would roll back the deployment the next day" is correct: "will" backshifts to "would", and "tomorrow" (relative to the day the team lead spoke) shifts to "the next day" (relative to the narrated timeline), since the document is written well after the fact. Option B fails to backshift the modal at all. Option C correctly backshifts "will" to "would" but leaves "tomorrow" unshifted, which becomes ambiguous or wrong once the report is read later. Option D changes the meaning by introducing a future perfect that was not part of the original statement.
4 / 22
The customer wrote in a support ticket, "Your API has been returning 500 errors since Monday." Which sentence correctly reports this in an internal summary?
"The customer reported that our API had been returning 500 errors since Monday" is correct: present perfect continuous "has been returning" backshifts to past perfect continuous "had been returning", correctly preserving both the ongoing, repeated nature of the errors and their connection to a still-relevant starting point ("since Monday"). Option A fails to backshift at all. Option C loses the continuous, ongoing aspect and the "since" time-anchor no longer fits naturally with simple past. Option D loses the continuous aspect, implying a single completed action rather than a repeated, ongoing problem.
5 / 22
The vendor's engineer said, "We can't reproduce this bug on our end." Which sentence correctly reports this in an escalation summary?
"The vendor's engineer said that they couldn't reproduce the bug on their end" is correct: the modal "can't" backshifts to "couldn't", the pronoun "our" (referring to the vendor's own team from their perspective) shifts to "their" from the reporter's perspective, and "this" shifts to "the" since it is no longer being pointed to directly. Option A fails to backshift the modal. Option C incorrectly keeps "our end", which would wrongly suggest the vendor's team is the same as the reporter's team. Option D mixes an unshifted modal with an ungrammatical past participle after "cannot".
6 / 22
During a code review, Alex reported that the `get_user_profile` endpoint was intermittently timing out. He said, "The logs show high latency on the database connection." Which of the following accurately reports Alex's statement in the code review comment?
The key here is accurately conveying the details of the report. Alex didn't say it was *consistently* slow; he described 'high latency'. Option 2 correctly captures the core issue – the database connection problem – and option 3 misinterprets the cause. Option 4 presents a suggestion, not a direct reporting of his statement.
7 / 22
During a standup meeting, Maria said: "We've implemented the new caching layer for the user profile service." Later, in the incident report, how should this be reported?
Report what was done, not what is hoped for. Maria's statement details the *action* – implementing the caching layer. Option 2 most accurately reflects this and avoids adding unverified claims about performance (which would be appropriate in a separate discussion). Options 3 and 4 introduce suggestions or speculation.
8 / 22
After investigating a production issue with the payment processing system, Ben reported to the team via email: "The system was intermittently failing to process transactions due to rate limiting." Which of the following accurately reports Ben's statement in the incident summary?
Focus on the root cause of the problem. Ben identified 'rate limiting' as the reason for the failures. Option 1 is too general; option 3 proposes a solution (which isn't necessarily appropriate in an incident summary), and option 4 introduces a completely different potential cause.
9 / 22
During a code review, Alex reported that the `get_user_profile` endpoint was intermittently timing out. He said, "The logs show high latency on the database connection." Which of the following accurately reports Alex's statement in the code review comment?
The key here is accurately conveying the details of the report. Alex didn't say it was *consistently* slow; he described 'high latency'. Option 2 correctly captures the core issue – the database connection problem – and option 3 misinterprets the cause. Option 4 presents a suggestion, not a direct reporting of his statement.
10 / 22
During a standup meeting, Maria said: "We've implemented the new caching layer for the user profile service." Later, in the incident report, how should this be reported?
Report what was done, not what is hoped for. Maria's statement details the *action* – implementing the caching layer. Option 2 most accurately reflects this and avoids adding unverified claims about performance (which would be appropriate in a separate discussion). Options 3 and 4 introduce suggestions or speculation.
11 / 22
After investigating a production issue with the payment processing system, Ben reported to the team via email: "The system was intermittently failing to process transactions due to rate limiting." Which of the following accurately reports Ben's statement in the incident summary?
Focus on the root cause of the problem. Ben identified 'rate limiting' as the reason for the failures. Option 1 is too general; option 3 proposes a solution (which isn't necessarily appropriate in an incident summary), and option 4 introduces a completely different potential cause.
12 / 22
During a code review, Alex reported that the `get_user_profile` endpoint was intermittently timing out. He said, "The logs show high latency on the database connection." Which of the following accurately reports Alex's statement in the code review comment?
The key here is accurately conveying the details of the report. Alex didn't say it was *consistently* slow; he described 'high latency'. Option 2 correctly captures the core issue – the database connection problem – and option 3 misinterprets the cause. Option 4 presents a suggestion, not a direct reporting of his statement.
13 / 22
During a standup meeting, Maria said: "We've implemented the new caching layer for the user profile service." Later, in the incident report, how should this be reported?
Report what was done, not what is hoped for. Maria's statement details the *action* – implementing the caching layer. Option 2 most accurately reflects this and avoids adding unverified claims about performance (which would be appropriate in a separate discussion). Options 3 and 4 introduce suggestions or speculation.
14 / 22
After investigating a production issue with the payment processing system, Ben reported to the team via email: "The system was intermittently failing to process transactions due to rate limiting." Which of the following accurately reports Ben's statement in the incident summary?
Focus on the root cause of the problem. Ben identified 'rate limiting' as the reason for the failures. Option 1 is too general; option 3 proposes a solution (which isn't necessarily appropriate in an incident summary), and option 4 introduces a completely different potential cause.
15 / 22
During a Slack conversation about a recent outage, Sarah reported: "The service was returning 502 Bad Gateway errors for approximately 15 minutes." Later, in the incident report, which of the following best reflects her original statement?
The key here is accurately conveying the *timeframe* of the error. 'Approximately' indicates an estimation, so 'for fifteen minutes' is the most precise reporting. Options A and D misinterpret 'approximately' as a general statement. Option C incorrectly uses 'intermittently,' which isn't present in Sarah's original utterance.
16 / 22
David reported a critical issue during a code review: "The service is experiencing high CPU utilization on the application servers." In the incident report's description of this event, which sentence best reflects David's statement?
Option 1 accurately reflects David's direct observation. Reported speech often requires a shift in tense and phrasing to convey the original statement without adding interpretation. Options 2, 3, and 4 either over-interpret David's words or introduce extraneous details not present in his initial report.
17 / 22
Liam sent a Slack message: "I've identified a potential race condition in the payment processing module. The system is occasionally failing to complete transactions." Later, when summarizing this incident for the postmortem, which of the following accurately reports Liam's concern?
Option 1 focuses on Liam's original description of the problem – a race condition. This is the most precise reporting of his statement. Options 2, 3, and 4 add unnecessary detail or misinterpret the nature of the issue.
18 / 22
Ethan reported a problem during a standup meeting: "We've detected a significant increase in latency for users accessing the analytics dashboard." Later, when documenting this issue in the incident report, which of the following options best summarizes Ethan's observation?
Option 1 is the most direct and accurate reporting of Ethan's statement. It focuses on the core observation – increased response times. Options 2, 3, and 4 add more detail or imply a cause without explicitly stating what Ethan observed.
19 / 22
Emily reported a problem during a Slack conversation: "The API is returning 500 errors when users attempt to update their profile information." In the incident report's summary of this event, which sentence best reflects Emily's statement?
A) The system experienced unexpected downtime.
B) Profile updates were failing due to server-side errors.
C) Users encountered a generic error message during profile modifications.
D) The API was overloaded and unable to process requests.
This question tests reporting direct speech with an action verb ('reporting'). The key is to accurately convey what Emily said – the API returned 500 errors *specifically* when updating profiles. Option A is too vague; B correctly identifies the cause (server-side error), C misrepresents the user experience, and D introduces a potential cause unrelated to Emily's report.
20 / 22
Daniel sent a PR description stating: "The new feature introduced a race condition in the user authentication service. Transactions are intermittently failing due to concurrent access." Later, when summarizing this incident for the postmortem, which of the following best reflects Daniel's findings?
A) Authentication services were unavailable during peak hours.
B) Concurrent requests caused unpredictable behavior in the user authentication service.
C) The service experienced a sudden performance degradation.
D) Users reported login failures due to network connectivity issues.
This assesses reporting a technical issue (race condition) with appropriate terminology. Daniel's original statement precisely describes the core problem – concurrent access leading to unpredictable behavior. Options A and D introduce external factors that aren't central to his report; B is accurate but less specific than Daniel's phrasing, and C focuses on performance rather than the root cause.
21 / 22
Frank said during a Slack conversation: "We've detected a significant increase in latency for users accessing the analytics dashboard." Later, in the incident report, how should this be reported?
A) The dashboard experienced intermittent outages.
B) Users were experiencing slow loading times on the analytics dashboard.
C) Data processing within the dashboard was inefficient.
D) The network connection to the dashboard was unstable.
This tests reporting a symptom (increased latency) rather than a diagnosis. Frank described *what* users experienced – slow loading times. Options A and C introduce possible causes; B is a restatement of Frank's statement but not the most concise report, and D focuses on a potential underlying problem rather than the observed effect.
22 / 22
Grace reported a production issue via email: "The system was intermittently failing to process transactions due to rate limiting." Which of the following options best describes how this should be summarized in the incident report?
A) The transaction processing system had a critical bug.
B) The system experienced intermittent failures related to transaction volume limits.
C) Users were unable to complete transactions due to network problems.
D) The database was overloaded and unable to handle transactions.
This question assesses reporting technical terminology – 'rate limiting' is a specific concept. Grace accurately described the issue: intermittent failures *because* of volume limits. Option A is too broad; B correctly identifies the cause; C introduces network problems as a potential factor (unrelated); and D misattributes the problem to database overload.
What will I practise in "Reported Speech in Incident Reports — IT Grammar Exercise"?
Practise backshifting tense, modals, pronouns, and time expressions correctly when reporting what engineers said during an incident in postmortems
How many exercises are in this module?
This module has 22 multiple-choice exercises, each with instant feedback and a full explanation of the correct answer.
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Every exercise is written by the CoderSlingo team, drawing on real workplace English used in IT roles, then reviewed for accuracy and clarity.