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Tuesday, September 14. 2021

"Shall" vs "will"

"Shall" is a dandy word, but not used much in the USA anymore. Perhaps it sounds stuffy, or maybe people do not know how to use it. You can say "I shall attend" but you can also say "You shall take out the garbage"


Shall vs Will


Posted by The Barrister in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 15:46 | Comments (9) | Trackbacks (0)

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In contract language, at least in the Federal Acquisition Regulation, "will" is optional, "shall" is mandatory.
#1 Mark on 2021-09-14 15:59 (Reply)
Ever notice in the Bible that men will and G-d shall? If a thing is subject to the will of man, then that thing will happen. If it is in G-d's domain it shall happen. A man "will" rise at sun-up, but the sun "shall" rise. Shall means it is certain to be, regardless of the will of man. I suppose in our age of uncertainty it should not be surprising that this wonderful word has fallen into disuse. By the way, would and should are closely related in usage to will and shall. If a man would do evil, that alone should bring a judgement from G-d.
#2 Fodderwing on 2021-09-14 16:42 (Reply)
I, too, learned it as a matter of effort or intent.
"Tomorrow morning, the sun shall rise; I will be awake to see it."

The sun requires no effort or intent to rise, while I must take action or expend effort in order to be awake at that hour of the morning.

However, I use this distinction only in the most formal of writing, as "shall" can sound stilted in normal use.
#2.1 Another Guy Named Dan on 2021-09-15 08:31 (Reply)
In FAA world "shall" and "will" are mandatory but "can" and "may" are optional for the airman/tech.
#3 indyjonesouthere on 2021-09-14 17:06 (Reply)
Barry ruined the word for me. I can't recover. Sad.
#4 james wilson (Link) on 2021-09-14 17:17 (Reply)
Usage is different in England and America, so Oxford is not quite the right source. Mark is correct that for lawyers, shall has come by convention to be stronger than will.

As usual, the spam filter will not let me post a link, but "shall or will America" will bring up plenty that illustrate the usages.
#5 Assistant Village Idiot on 2021-09-14 19:57 (Reply)
I don't get this. Yes there are fat people, anywhere from 30-100+ lbs over weight and their are obese people who are 150-400+ lbs overweight. Do you really think that if you limited their carbs they would all be at some fictional ideal weight?

Also, do you overweight people ever look around and see that many people, perhaps half the population are not either overweight or obese? Do you think that they are all on restricted diets? NO! They are genetically predisposed to be the weight that they are just exactly like all the overweight and obese people are genetically predisposed to be the weight that THEY are. How does this simple fact escape you???

YES! if you diet you will lose weight. YES! if you go off the diet you will gain back the weight. Are you beginning to understand this yet? So IF you are genetically predisposed to be overweight or obese you must diet for the rest of your life. This is difficult. You can choose to limit carbs or fat or calories or whatever! But you will have to do it forever. AND when you find something that works FOR YOU, that does not mean you discovered the secret of life. You did not solve the problem for everyone and writing a book doesn't make you god!

So limit carbs if that works for you. Ignore the guy next to you eating 3000 calories a day in mostly carbs and weighs 10 lbs below his ideal weight. Because by recognizing this you invalidate all your proclamations of discovering the secret of fatness. You haven't discovered shit! You are fat because your mother and/or father was fat and NOT because you ate carbs!
#6 Huh on 2021-09-15 09:46 (Reply)
Apples and lemons. There are no few people that cannot afford to eat processed carbohydrates without becoming fat, others it affects not at all. Epigenetics expains that this new phenomenon derives from periods of famine, skips generations differently according to sex, and has all sorts of unwanted effects on lives but is something present only in agricultural civilizations. In the before times fasting was a normal part of living which the body was adapted for. It still is but we don't experience fasting so lots of wires are getting crossed, some more than others.
#6.1 james wilson (Link) on 2021-09-16 17:43 (Reply)
Well, I was taught (70 or 80 years ago) that you use shall when directing other people, and will when you're comitting yourself. When I went on acitve duty ('53) I began to be told you will do such and such, and they were still telling me that when I retired in '75. So much for my early learning I guess.
#7 BillH on 2021-09-15 10:55 (Reply)

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