Shall and will

Common card · No. 413418

Shall and will are two of the English modal verbs. They have various uses, including the expression of propositions about the future, in what is usually referred to as the future tense of English. Historically, prescriptive grammar stated that, when expressing pure futurity (without any additional meaning such as desire or command), shall was to be used when the subject was in the first person, and will in other cases (e.g., "On Sunday, we shall go to church, and the preacher will read the Bible.") This rule is no longer commonly adhered to by any group of English speakers within the USA, and will has essentially replaced shall in nearly all contexts there. There are, however, many groups of speakers by region — and sometimes by class — within the UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand who maintain this distinction, both in spoken and in written English. For those regions that maintain the distinction — and often more broadly in formal English — the use of will for the first person and...

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