82,891
edits
Shall: Difference between revisions
no edit summary
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
||
| (9 intermediate revisions by the same user not shown) | |||
| Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
{{ | {{a|plainenglish| | ||
[[File:Violet Elizabeth Botts.png|450px|thumb|center|A big fan of “shall”, yesterday.]] | |||
}}A verb that seems so safe — so forensic — fusty, old-fashioned, stolid, goodie-two-shoes — but yet so tantalisingly ''vague''. | |||
Vague in that “shall” can be an airily floated aspiration for the future — “I say,” said Jenkins, absent-mindedly knocking out his pipe on a passing child’s head, “I do believe I shall go to the theatre tonight!” — but just as easily can be a stentorian direction to an underling to carry out a binding duty: “You ''shall'' do the dishes, young lady, and you shall do them ''NOW''”.<ref>Real life example.</ref> | Vague in that “shall” can be an airily floated aspiration for the future — “I say,” said Jenkins, absent-mindedly knocking out his pipe on a passing child’s head, “I do believe I shall go to the theatre tonight!” — but just as easily can be a stentorian direction to an underling to carry out a binding duty: “You ''shall'' do the dishes, young lady, and you shall do them ''NOW''”.<ref>Real life example.</ref> | ||
[[Mediocre lawyer|Lawyers]] like the latter formulation, a lot, and spray it around as if | [[Mediocre lawyer|Lawyers]] like the latter formulation, a lot, and spray it around as if they’re standing behind a Gatling gun loaded with [[shall]]s.<ref>Thank-you, ladies and gentlemen. There’s a hat going round.</ref> But here’s the problem, and it’s not often you hear this is a problem, but still: ''conjugation''. A wilful [[shall]] to ''me'' is a stentorian one to ''you'', and vice versa.<ref>Authority no less impressive than the [https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/usage/shall-or-will Oxford English Dictionary]:“The traditional rule is that [[shall]] is used with first person [[pronoun]]s (i.e. [[I]] and we) to form the future tense, while will is used with second and third person forms (i.e. you, he, she, it, they). [...] However, when it comes to expressing a strong determination to do something, the roles are reversed: will is used with the first person, and [[shall]] with the second and third.” </ref> You can’t just spray your [[shall]]s and [[will]]s around around ''[[will]]y''-nilly. | ||
{{ | {{tabletopflex|45}} | ||
{{cellwidth|50}} | {{cellwidth|50}} | ||
'''Airily floated future aspiration''' | '''Airily floated future aspiration''' | ||
| Line 28: | Line 30: | ||
{{tablebottom}} | {{tablebottom}} | ||
If, in other words, you’re going to be a dick about it, then you have to be careful which you mean, especially if you are one of these new age folk who like to write contracts in the first and second person. There again, if you’re one of those, you’re not likely to be using any kind of [[shall]] in the first place, because “[[must]]” [[will]] do, and it won’t make you sound like such an {{tag|egg}}. | If, in other words, [[Noli mentula esse|you’re going to be a dick about it]],<ref>This is not advice we would dream of offering, of course.</ref> then you have to be careful which you mean, especially if you are one of these new age folk who like to write contracts in the first and second person. There again, if you’re one of those, you’re not likely to be using any kind of [[shall]] in the first place, because “[[must]]” [[will]] do, and it won’t make you sound like such an {{tag|egg}}. | ||
Still, “[[shall]]” has its defenders, including no less a doyen than that self-styled style guru and all-round Robert Fripp of [[plain English]] advocacy, {{author|Ken Adams}} who, in his epochal ''[[A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting|A Manual of Applicable Style for the Drafting of Contractual Instruments]]'' sets out, over ten pages of tightly-numbered paragraphs, his reasons why “[[shall]]” is still the top dog when it comes to articulating one party’s ''duty'' to the other. Now Mr. Adams is a fellow of strong opinions about inconsequential things, we lose interest in the debate by page sixteen and just feel, viscerally, that “shall” is a fusty old word, no-one uses it anymore in normal conversation, “[[must]]” will do perfectly well instead and is more idiomatic. | |||
“Not so!” squeaks Mr. Adams, and carries on at some length but, readers, the [[JC]]’s eyes glaze over — by all means buy his doorstop if you’re interested in his argument and have a [[monkey]] to spare — but in our 30 years of commercial law we’ve not found a clinching justification to use “shall”, so we shall not start doing so now. | |||
{{ref}} | {{ref}} | ||