shall, will

   Authorities have been trying to pin down the vagaries and nuances of shall and will since the seventeenth century. In The Kings English, the Fowler brothers devote twenty pages to the matter. The gist of what they have to say is that either you understand the distinctions instinctively or you do not; that if you dont, you probably never will; and that if you do, you dont need to be told anyway.

   The rule most frequently propounded is that to express simple futurity you should use shall in the first person and will in the second and third persons, and to express determination (or volition) you should do the reverse. But by that rule Churchill blundered grammatically when he vowed, "We shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender." As did Mac Arthur when he said at Corregidor, "I shall return." As have all those who have ever sung "We Shall Overcome."

   The simple fact is that whether you use shall or will in a given instance depends very much on your age and your birthplace and the emphasis with which you mean to express yourself. The English tend to use shall more frequently and more specifically than do the Scots or the Irish or Americans, but even in England the distinctions are rapidly fading and by no means fixed.

   In short, it is not possible to make rigid rules to distinguish between the two, and (dare I say it?) the distinctions are no longer all that important anyway.

   See will, would