ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

"In this document we will examine bla bla bla" - should this be "shall"? Never been very clear on the difference.

(Yes, the whole construction is slightly icky. I don't think I can escape it altogether, but alternatives gratefully considered. I hate writing this kind of thing but someone told me to turn their bullet points into full sentences for the introductory waffle)

Thanks!

I'd use 'will' with 'we'.

But 'shall' with 'I'.

Not entirely sure why, though.

I don't think there's a set rule about "shall" vs. "will," but for me "shall" carries the connotation of "should AND will."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shall_and_will

From that Wikipedia article:

1653 Grammatica Linguae Anglicanae stated "The rule is... to express a future event without emotional overtones, one should say I shall, we shall, but you/he/she/they will; conversely, for emphasis, willfulness, or insistence, one should say I/we will, but you/he/she/they shall".

Oh Englishpaws! Thanks everyone.

I think starting a sentence with however is fine, especially if the previous statement is really long. It works well for emphasis. If it's short, like Andy's example, it makes more sense for it to be one sentence.

I've always used shall after I and we, and will after he, they and you. I have no idea where this came from, though. Am I the only one? If so, I may drop the charade.

think starting a sentence with however is fine,

Yeah, gotta be really. This from the more or less amusing King's English by Amis -

Custom has decreed that however should not come first in a sentence. When it does come it tends to throw an emphasis on the immediately preceding word or phrase which is very likely not wanted and may be a nuisance. If it is put first nothing much seems to go wrong, and surely one would rather write or read:

Tomorrow I go on holiday for a couple of weeks. However, I will telephone you as soon as I can after I get back,

than either:

Tomorrow ... weeks. I will, however, telephone you ...

or

Tomorrow ... weeks. I will telephone you as soon as I can after I get back, however.

To some tastes, however, advantageously placed (as here) or not, however will inevitably seem a little pompous. Why not go all the way in that direction and begin with a plonking nevertheless, or some way in the other and write anyway or still?

I was going to say that this addresses the issue, but actually, I haven't got a clue what he's on about - I've got a dreadful hangover, but that seems to read like some sort of verbal Escher painting. Or maybe I'm just in that state I sometimes get where simple popular detective stories and the like seem, on a stylistic level, insurmountably complex, meaning to be almost permanently deferred in even the most simple looking sentences.

Yet another self-defeating post, way to go Gamaliel.

Tomorrow ... weeks. I will, however, telephone you ...

confusing

Tomorrow ... weeks. I will telephone you as soon as I can after I get back, however.

not needed

I'm actually really partial to putting the "however" in that second spot -- "I will, however, phone you"

Whatever syntactical thing that relies on isn't that uncommon, to be honest -- I think plenty of people are fine with constructions like

They said they would. As it turns out, though, they didn't.

wordy

NB in the Saunders' English, it would be:

What I will do however is that I will phone you.

(that's a better description than confusing and refers to the Amis example, not yr example nabisco)

ha ha i was just talking about/thinking about saunders' syntax

Back to will and shall:

Is it just me, or is "will" stronger than "shall"? I use will a lot more in the I will do blah blah blah, but maybe that's partly a professional language thing.

yeah isnt that what whoever upthread said? "shall" seems to have a sort of dutiful connotation while "will" seems much more emotional

Help me think this one through:

"...pertains to students who have completed high school and are 18 years and over as of July 1"
vs.
"...pertains to students who have completed high school and are 18 years or over as of July 1"

My instinct is to go with "or" because the two requirements to be met are considered for each individual student, not en masse. Each student can be either 18 or over 18, but not both. But with "students" as a plural, it still feels awfully slippery.

Can you just say "over 18" and not worry about any students who are celebrating their 18th birthday on 1st July?

Or "...are over 18 as of July 2"?

pertains to students who have completed high school and are 18 years or older as of July 1

I'm fairly sure "or" is better, though I'm still working on a response to the plural-students issue

I guess I could say "over 17," but I'm still curious about this.

"and were born on or before July 1, 1991".

(Basically what's messing with you is that if you broke this down into units you'd actually get "students who are 18" AND "students who are over 18," both of which groups are eligible, right?)

I think the plural issue is already sort of out the door because you're already saying students are 18 years old--it's already clear that the age is referring to the age of each individual student, so you're free to use 'or', I think.

Isn't "These students are 18 years old" really saying
"These students are (each) 18 years old"?

The more I think about this, I am actually coming around toward "and" (though I'm not there yet) -- it's unusual and probably less likely to be understood, but it's smelling more and more technically correct

students who have completed high school and belong to the age group "18 years and over"

^^I'm not honestly suggesting that as a fix, btw, just trying out ways of understanding this.

"those students who can legally buy a pint in a British pub"

Both sort of make sense to me:

"students who are 18 years and (students who are) over (18 years)"
"students who are (either) 18 years or over (18 years)"

But "or" reads a little more smoothly to me because you don't have to implicitly reach back toward the subject again.

"or" definitely reads better (though to be honest no one's gonna blink much at either) ... it's just interesting that after "completed high school and" we start reading these as criteria for individual students, because in the collective sense I think one would normally use a version of, like, "students aged 18 and over"

"...pertains to students who have completed high school and are at least 18 years old as of July 1"

Ha, I think I might go with that, actually.

but if you substitute "more" for "over" in a similar sentence, e.g. "household income is $25,000 or more" you wouldn't put "and" in that sentence - or at least it would look weird. However, in the sentence in question both "or" and "and" look fine to a casual reader.

xp Hi Dere - best way of putting it

I need some help in identifying parts of speech, e.g. "Do you like chocolate?" = auxiliary verb + subject pronoun + main verb + object (uncountable noun).

The one I'm struggling with a bit is 'used to' (used to talk about past habits which are no longer continued), e.g. "He used to smoke". It behaves a bit like a modal verb, but isn't one (not in the way that 'can' or 'must' or 'will' are). It's not really an auxiliary either, but it's not the main verb. It seems to be a 'special case', but that's not terribly helpful.

It's a normal verb plus an infinitive: He (subject) used (verb) to smoke (infinitive).

It's only a special case in that it only has that meaning in the past.

It's just a verb pattern. It needs a complement, and the complement has to be an infinitive.

Or is it a semi-modal like "ought to"?

But is habituality the kind of idea that a modal verb expresses?

You have sown doubt where once there was certainty.

Isn't the idea with semi-modals that they can still be used to form questions and negatives without auxiliaries (the same as other modals)?
So we say You mustn't go instead of You don't must go and Can he swim? instead of Does he can swim?.
'Ought to' kind of conforms to this: you could say You oughtn't to go and Ought I to stay?(although these both sound very formal).
'Used to' doesn't conform to this: you'd say He didn't use to swear instead of He usedn't to swear and Did you use to have a beard? instead of Used you to have a beard?

bit of a digression here, but an entertaining one: a takedown of strunk & white. (and here's where i admit that despite dutifully keeping it on my shelves since college, i've barely ever cracked the elements of style. now i don't feel so bad about that.)

If you had cracked it you would've given it a takedown yourself.

the reason the elements of style is great is that it is beautifully written and engaging to read - no one thinks of it as a bible

and i'd much rather read it that this guy's stilted, stuffy and self-satisfied takedown

Exactly.

"pre-madonnas" beats "for all intensive purposes" as my new favorite

That's a personal favourite of mine - it appeared in my (otherwise quite good) student paper at Uni.

it's a deep-seeded mistake