と: The Quotation Particle

と has a third, completely different life beyond the "and / with" you met on the と = and/with page: it is the quotation particle, the piece that packages up a chunk of speech or thought and hands it to a verb of saying, thinking, or naming. Where English uses "that" — he said *that he would come — Japanese uses と, with one structural twist that trips up every beginner: *と comes after the quoted content, not before it. The quote comes first; と closes it and points to the reporting verb.

Master と and you unlock a huge amount of natural Japanese at once: reporting what people said, stating what you think, giving names and readings, introducing yourself. It is the connective tissue of indirect speech. This page covers the mechanics, the verbs it pairs with, and the one register rule — the plain-form rule — that separates learners who sound natural from learners who don't.

Direct quotation: 「 」 + と

The simplest use quotes someone's words verbatim, wrapped in Japanese quotation marks 「 」 (the equivalent of " "), with と immediately after the closing 」:

Inside 「 」 the words are reproduced exactly as spoken — you are replaying the audio. と then marks "that was the quote" and connects it to 言う, 泣き出す, and so on. Notice と sits outside the quotation marks, right before the verb.

Indirect quotation: plain-form clause + と

Far more common in everyday speech is indirect quotation: you report the content of what was said or thought without quoting it word for word, using a plain-form clause + と.

The clause before と — 明日会社に行く, 疲れた — is a complete plain-form sentence, and と turns it into "the content of what was said." There are no quotation marks, because you are reporting the gist, not the exact wording.

The plain-form rule — the key register fact

Here is the single most important thing on this page, and the one that most often exposes a learner. The quoted clause before と stays in plain (dictionary/casual) form, no matter how polite the outer sentence is. The politeness lives on the reporting verb (言いました, 思います), not on the reported words.

The outer verb is polite (言いました), but the quoted clause is the plain 始まる — not ×始まりますと言いました. Why? Because と packages a proposition — a bare statement of what is the case — and a proposition has no politeness of its own; politeness is a property of how you address your listener, which is handled once, on the final verb. Sticking ます inside the quote is like conjugating the subject of an English "that"-clause for the listener's benefit — it puts the politeness in the wrong place.

The exception proves the rule: when you quote someone's exact polite words directly inside 「 」, you preserve whatever they actually said, ます and all — because a direct quote is a faithful recording:

Direct quote (「 」) → keep the original register. Indirect report (plain + と) → plain form. That is the whole story.

と思う: reporting thoughts and opinions

The same と marks the content of thought with 思う ("think"), 考える ("consider"), and 信じる ("believe"). This is how you state opinions, guesses, and impressions in Japanese.

When the quoted content ends in a noun or な-adjective, you need だ before と (because a plain-form clause needs its copula):

Leaving out だ (×雨と思う) is a classic slip — a plain-form clause ending in a noun still needs its copula before と. A special, high-frequency case is the volitional + と思う pattern (行こうと思う, "I'm thinking of going"), which expresses intention; it has its own volitional + と思う page.

Naming, reading, and calling: 何と, ～という, ～と呼ぶ

と also marks a name or reading assigned to something — with 言う (be called), 読む (be read), 書く (be written), 呼ぶ (call), and the humble 申す (be named).

田中と申します (formal) is the standard humble self-introduction; と marks "Tanaka" as the name given. 何と読む asks what reading a character has, and ～という ("called ~") is the everyday way to attach a name to a thing. Note that 言う in ～という is conventionally written in kana (いう) in this naming pattern.

聞く and 書く: asking, hearing, and writing

と is not confined to 言う and 思う — it caps the content for any verb that reports something, including 聞く (ask / hear), 書く (write), and 答える (answer).

With 聞く, と can wrap an embedded question (来るかと) just as easily as a statement. With 書く, と marks exactly what got written down. The rule is uniform across all of these: whatever verb reports content — spoken, thought, heard, or written — と marks the point where that content ends and the reporting begins.

って: the casual spoken form

In casual speech, と (and the fuller という) contracts to って (informal). You will hear it constantly in conversation:

って does the same quotative job as と but signals a relaxed register. In writing and formal speech, use と; in chat and casual talk, って is natural. (Register: informal.)

Common mistakes

The two errors to burn into memory: never drop と before a verb of saying/thinking (English "that" is often invisible, but Japanese と never is), and keep the quoted clause in plain form (行くと言いました, not 行きますと言いました). Everything else about と-quotation follows from treating it as the closing bracket around a self-contained proposition. For the deeper syntax of ～という and the direct-vs-indirect split, see the quotation syntax page and direct vs indirect quotation.

Key takeaways

• と is the quotation particle — the "that" of Japanese — and it comes after the quoted content.
• Direct quotes go in 「 」 (verbatim, any register); indirect quotes are a plain-form clause + と.
• The quoted clause stays in plain form under a polite outer verb: 始まると言いました, not 始まりますと言いました.
• A quoted clause ending in a noun / な-adjective needs だ before と: 雨だと思う.
• と pairs with 言う, 思う, 聞く, 読む, 書く, 呼ぶ, 申す; in casual speech it contracts to って.