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[[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> | ||
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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. | 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 | “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}} | ||