Shall and will
This rule is no longer commonly adhered to by any group of English speakers, and will has essentially replaced shall in nearly all contexts.
Owing its use in varying legal contexts, its meaning can be ambiguous; the United States government's Plain Language group advises writers not to use the word at all.
[1] Other legal drafting experts, including Plain Language advocates, argue that while shall can be ambiguous in statutes (which most of the cited litigation on the word's interpretation involves), court rules, and consumer contracts, that reasoning does not apply to the language of business contracts.
[2] These experts recommend using shall but only to impose an obligation on a contractual party that is the subject of the sentence, i.e., to convey the meaning "hereby has a duty to".
Cognates include Old Norse vilja, German wollen (ich/er/sie will, meaning I/he/she want/s to), Dutch willen, Gothic wiljan.
It also has relatives in non-Germanic languages, such as Latin velle ("wish for") and voluptas ("pleasure"), and Polish woleć ("prefer").
These forms have developed a range of meanings, frequently independent of those of shall and will (as described in the section on should and would below).
Aside from this, though, shall and will (like the other modals) are defective verbs – they do not have other grammatical forms such as infinitives, imperatives or participles.
[8] Although when used purely as future markers they are largely interchangeable (as will be discussed in the following sections), each of the two verbs also has certain specific uses in which it cannot be replaced by the other without change of meaning.
In statements, shall has the specific use of expressing an order or instruction, normally in elevated or formal register.
The verbs will and shall, when used as future markers, are largely interchangeable with regard to literal meaning.
Use of shall is normally a marked usage, typically indicating formality or seriousness and (if not used with a first person subject) expressing a colored meaning as described below.
According to this rule, when expressing futurity and nothing more, the auxiliary shall is to be used with first person subjects (I and we), and will is to be used in other instances.
This practice kept shall alive in the role of future marker; it is used consistently as such in the Middle English Wycliffe's Bible.
An influential proponent of the prescriptive rule that shall is to be used as the usual future marker in the first person was John Wallis.
Henry Watson Fowler wrote in his book The King's English (1906), regarding the rules for using shall vs. will, the comment "the idiomatic use, while it comes by nature to southern Englishmen ... is so complicated that those who are not to the manner born can hardly acquire it".
An illustration of the supposed contrast between shall and will (when the prescriptive rule is adhered to) appeared in the 19th century,[11] and has been repeated in the 20th century[12] and in the 21st:[13] An example of this distinction in writing occurs in Henry James's 1893 short story The Middle Years: A more popular illustration of the use of "shall" with the second person to express determination occurs in the oft-quoted words the fairy godmother traditionally says to Cinderella in British versions of the well-known fairy tale: "You shall go to the ball, Cinderella!"
The use of shall as the usual future marker[dubious – discuss] in the first person nevertheless persists in some more formal or elevated registers of English.
Normally the use of will in such questions would change the meaning to a simple request for information: "Shall I play goalkeeper?"
The auxiliary will can therefore be used in questions either simply to enquire about what is expected to occur in the future, or (especially with the second person subject you) to make a request: Bryan Garner and Justice Scalia in Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts describe that some legal drafting has sloppy use of the word "shall".
[15]: 1849 In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court said ("The word 'shall' generally indicates a command that admits of no discretion on the part of the person instructed to carry out the directive"); Black's Law Dictionary 1375 (6th ed.
Shall and will are distinguished by NASA[18] and Wikiversity[19] as follows: On standards published by International Organization for Standardization (ISO), IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission), ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials), IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), requirements with "shall" are the mandatory requirements, meaning, "must", or "have to".
[22][23][24] Outside DoD, other parts of the U.S. government advise against using the word shall for three reasons: it lacks a single clear meaning, it causes litigation, and it is nearly absent from ordinary speech.
The main use of should in modern English is as a synonym of ought to, expressing quasi-obligation, appropriateness, or expectation (it cannot be replaced by would in these meanings).
Examples: Other specific uses of should involve the expression of irrealis mood: The main use of would is in conditional clauses (described in detail in the article on English conditional sentences): In this use, would is sometimes (though rarely) replaced by should when the subject is in the first person (by virtue of the same prescriptive rule that demands shall rather than will as the normal future marker for that person).
However its use in more general cases is old-fashioned or highly formal, and can give rise to ambiguity with the more common use of should to mean ought to.
