Punctuation

esmerelda98

margaretclare wrote: »

Throughout this thread 'grammar' is spelled 'grammer'.

One problem nowadays may be the lack of reading. There are so many other distractions, but my generation read a lot. Some of us read avidly - I could never get enough reading material and I'll read the back of a cereal packet if nothing else is available . I think I absorbed my grammar and English usage from my reading.

Nowadays, is there still a distinction made between 'shall' and 'will'? E.g. 'I will drown, no one shall help me!' rather than 'I shall drown, no one will help me!'

I frequently find 'will' used where I would have used 'shall'.

I think this is how I've learnt my punctuation and grammar, but I haven't picked up some of the finer points. I keep meaning to do something about this, but my copy of 'Eats, Shoots and Leaves' remains pristine, and I think even that is just a gentle introduction.

I don't know the distinction between will and shall. Please tell.

Gloomendoom

Whenever I get an email from a student in 'text speak' I ask them to send me a translation in proper English.

They soon learn.

margaretclare

I agree about 'should of' . Grrrr!!! Is this because so often it is spoken 'should've' as in 'should've gone to SpecSavers'. What really means 'should have' is then mis-spelled as 'should of'.

Will and shall.

Will implies an intention. Shall implies something that happens whether you take action or not, or something that you have no choice about. For instance:

'I will not cease from mental fight' i.e. this is an action I intend to take.

'Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand'. 'My sword' is passive, I am the person wielding it; it cannot act on its own.

The example I gave earlier, about the foreign student of English who was in danger of drowning: by saying 'I will drown' he implied he intended to drown. It should have been 'I shall drown'.

I'm sure someone else could explain it better. By the way, there's a long discussion of 'shall' and 'will' in Fowler's Modern English Usage. Or: http://www.dailywritingtips.com/the-difference-between-will-and-shall/

or http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/learnit/learnitv43.shtml

In this, 'will' implies a strong intention to do something as in the first example I gave 'I will not cease from mental fight'.

Another small point which may not be used nowadays is the difference between 'can' and 'may' as in:

Child: Can I go out to play? (asking permission)

Parent: You can, but you may not. (You are physically able to go out to play, but I do not give you permission).

DVardysShadow

margaretclare wrote: »

... Nowadays, is there still a distinction made between 'shall' and 'will'? E.g. 'I will drown, no one shall help me!' rather than 'I shall drown, no one will help me!'

I frequently find 'will' used where I would have used 'shall'.

I seem to remember a whole lesson in French of all subjects being given over to this topic, so that for the exam we could translate correctly. The fact that we were doing this in a French class indicated to me at the time, decades ago, that this distinction was actually already lost to the English Language.

I can see perfectly clearly the distinction in meaning in the example you give, but there is something in the back of my mind about the roles of the words being inverted in some situations. Or is my confusion just the consequence of letting a french teacher try their hand at English?

Quiet_Life

OED definition
[FONT=&quot]shall[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] • modal verb ([/FONT][FONT=&quot]3rd sing. present[/FONT][FONT=&quot] shall) 1 (in the first person) expressing the future tense. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]2[/FONT][FONT=&quot] expressing a strong assertion or intention. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]3[/FONT][FONT=&quot] expressing an instruction or command. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]4[/FONT][FONT=&quot] used in questions indicating offers or suggestions. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT][FONT=&quot]— USAGE[/FONT][FONT=&quot] Strictly speaking shall should be used with I and we to form the future tense, as in I shall be late, while will should be used with you, he, she, it, and they, as in she will not be there. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]This, however, is reversed when strong determination is being expressed, as in I will not tolerate this , and you shall go to school. In speech the distinction tends to be obscured, through the use of the contracted forms I’ll, she’ll, etc. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT][FONT=&quot]— ORIGIN[/FONT][FONT=&quot] Old English, from a base meaning ‘owe’.[/FONT]

DVardysShadow

margaretclare wrote: »

Will and shall.

Will implies an intention. Shall implies something that happens whether you take action or not, or something that you have no choice about. For instance:

'I will not cease from mental fight' i.e. this is an action I intend to take.

'Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand'. 'My sword' is passive, I am the person wielding it; it cannot act on its own.

The example I gave earlier, about the foreign student of English who was in danger of drowning: by saying 'I will drown' he implied he intended to drown. It should have been 'I shall drown'.

I'm sure someone else could explain it better. By the way, there's a long discussion of 'shall' and 'will' in Fowler's Modern English Usage. Or: http://www.dailywritingtips.com/the-difference-between-will-and-shall/

or http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/learnit/learnitv43.shtml

In this, 'will' implies a strong intention to do something as in the first example I gave 'I will not cease from mental fight'.

Thanks. This has always been my understanding. But then this crops up from that one french lesson

DVardysShadow wrote: »

I can see perfectly clearly the distinction in meaning in the example you give, but there is something in the back of my mind about the roles of the words being inverted in some situations. Or is my confusion just the consequence of letting a french teacher try their hand at English?

This actually crops up in one of your links, margaretclare

Use shall in the first person and will in the second and third persons for the simple future tense:
I shall sing this afternoon.
You will succeed.
He will stay at home.

Now that is not how I use English. But it gets worse:

Quiet_Life wrote: »

OED definition
[FONT=&quot]shall[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] • modal verb ([/FONT][FONT=&quot]3rd sing. present[/FONT][FONT=&quot] shall) 1 (in the first person) expressing the future tense. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]2[/FONT][FONT=&quot] expressing a strong assertion or intention. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]3[/FONT][FONT=&quot] expressing an instruction or command. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]4[/FONT][FONT=&quot] used in questions indicating offers or suggestions. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]— USAGE[/FONT][FONT=&quot] Strictly speaking shall should be used with I and we to form the future tense, as in I shall be late, while will should be used with you, he, she, it, and they, as in she will not be there. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]This, however, is reversed when strong determination is being expressed, as in I will not tolerate this , and you shall go to school. In speech the distinction tends to be obscured, through the use of the contracted forms I’ll, she’ll, etc. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]— ORIGIN[/FONT][FONT=&quot] Old English, from a base meaning ‘owe’.[/FONT]

To me this is totally unreal and looks to be a wholly artificial grammar rule or at best a description of how a small section of society expressed itself at a certain period in time.

Gloomendoom

margaretclare wrote: »

I agree about 'should of' . Grrrr!!! Is this because so often it is spoken 'should've' as in 'should've gone to SpecSavers'. What really means 'should have' is then mis-spelled as 'should of'.

Don't forget one of the most common errors in English usage...

'Bored of' instead of the correct 'bored with'.

Dormouse

DVardysShadow wrote: »

To me this is totally unreal and looks to be a wholly artificial grammar rule or at best a description of how a small section of society expressed itself at a certain period in time.

It doesn't look unreal to me. That's the way I was taught, 'shall' is future tense for 1st person, 'will' for 2nd and 3rd person.

However, it definitely seems to be one of those rules that is changing with time.

BitterAndTwisted

Here's a new one on me: people are asked what they think to this, that or the other rather than what they think of it. Has this been in use for a while but I've just not noticed it?

DVardysShadow

Dormouse wrote: »

It doesn't look unreal to me. That's the way I was taught, 'shall' is future tense for 1st person, 'will' for 2nd and 3rd person.

However, it definitely seems to be one of those rules that is changing with time.

It is more the [FONT=&quot]This, however, is reversed when strong determination is being expressed, as in I will not tolerate this , and you shall go to school. In speech the distinction tends to be obscured, through the use of the contracted forms I’ll, she’ll, etc. [/FONT]which looks unreal to me. But even the 'shall' vs 'will' rule only corresponds with what I was taught once forty years ago, not with how I have seen the language being used. I can see a logical reason for the rule, but I have never heard it used in justification.