Hello, all
I have been reading Dorothy Sayers essays on the train, and
enjoying them very much. Here are her remarks on `shall'
and `will', which I can't help quoting:
Let us take as our example that famous distinction which we
English alone in all the world know how to make: the
distinction between "shall" and "will." "The mere
Englishman," says Mr. H. W. Fowler, "if he reflects upon the
matter at all, is convinced that his shall and will endows
his speech with a delicate precision that could not be
attained without it, and serves more important purposes than
that of a race-label." (Mark, in passing, how slyly the
scholar is here laughing in his sleeve at those to whom one
word is as good as another. "Mere Englishman," says he,
knowing that this will be taken for mock humility. But he
knows, too, that merus means "pure," and that when Queen
Elizabeth called herself "mere English" she meant it for a
boast.) Indeed, the distinction is no empty one: "I will do
it" (with reluctance, but you force me); "I shall do it"
(and God and His angels have no power to stay me).
Consider this sentence, taken from a short novel which
contains no fewer than forty-three incorrect uses of "will"
and "would":
I am also thinking about getting some work. It should be
easy, because I won't be pushed by necessity.
It looks like a failure of logic. If the speaker is
determined not to be pushed by his necessity into whatever
work shall offer itself, then, one would say, a man so
necessitous and so obstinate will not easily find work
before he perishes of his necessities. But the context shows
that the author does not mean this. He means: "I shall not
be pushed by necessity (because I have plenty of money), and
can therefore afford to take a job with small pay; and that
should be easy to find."
Is this a trifling matter, not worth making clear? Then see
how you can destroy the most beautiful parable in Scripture
by using the one word for the other:
I shall arise and go to my father and shall say unto him
...
How jaunty the words are now; how cocksure; how
hypocritical; how they compel the sneering comment, "and the
poor old blighter will fall for the sob-stuff again."[2]
Remember, too, how the late Lord Oxford, who was a stylist,
refused on a famous occasion to surrender the hammer-stroke
of "shall," even when faced by a conglomeration of sibilants
that might have daunted the most courageous orator:
We shall not sheathe the sword that we have not lightly
drawn...
Not promise; but prophecy.
Does anybody, possessing a tool that will do such delicate
work so easily, really desire to abandon it? It is being
abandoned. We are letting "shall" and "should" drift out of
our hands while we labour to do their work, crudely and
coarsely, with "will" and "would." Even so correct and
elegant a writer as Mr. Robert Graves is losing his English
ear and writing: "I would like to," and "I would prefer to."
Here the use is redundant and not ambiguous; but if we do
not trouble to distinguish we shall soon lose the power of
distinguishing. Moreover, if we use "will" or "would"
wrongly nine times, and the tenth time intend it rightly,
who, the tenth time, will give us credit for good
intentions? The gentleman with the forty-three wrong uses
has perhaps a dozen right uses as well; but amid so great a
herd of goats his few innocent lambs look like strays.
This was from "The English Language":
https://www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20170113
I like her essays much more than her detective stores, do
you?
Those interested in the correct usage of `will' and `shall'
may consult "King's English":
https://www.bartleby.com/116/ .
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* Origin: nntp://news.fidonet.fi (2:221/6.0)