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Hello, all

I have been reading Dorothy Sayers essays on the train, and
enjoying them very much.  Here are her remarks on `shall'
and `will', which I can't help quoting:

   Let us take as our example that famous distinction which we
   English alone in all the world know how to make: the
   distinction between "shall" and "will." "The mere
   Englishman," says Mr. H. W. Fowler, "if he reflects upon the
   matter at all, is convinced that his shall and will endows
   his speech with a delicate precision that could not be
   attained without it, and serves more important purposes than
   that of a race-label." (Mark, in passing, how slyly the
   scholar is here laughing in his sleeve at those to whom one
   word is as good as another. "Mere Englishman," says he,
   knowing that this will be taken for mock humility. But he
   knows, too, that merus means "pure," and that when Queen
   Elizabeth called herself "mere English" she meant it for a
   boast.) Indeed, the distinction is no empty one: "I will do
   it" (with reluctance, but you force me); "I shall do it"
   (and God and His angels have no power to stay me).

   Consider this sentence, taken from a short novel which
   contains no fewer than forty-three incorrect uses of "will"
   and "would":

      I am also thinking about getting some work. It should be
      easy, because I won't be pushed by necessity.

   It looks like a failure of logic. If the speaker is
   determined not to be pushed by his necessity into whatever
   work shall offer itself, then, one would say, a man so
   necessitous and so obstinate will not easily find work
   before he perishes of his necessities. But the context shows
   that the author does not mean this. He means: "I shall not
   be pushed by necessity (because I have plenty of money), and
   can therefore afford to take a job with small pay; and that
   should be easy to find."

   Is this a trifling matter, not worth making clear? Then see
   how you can destroy the most beautiful parable in Scripture
   by using the one word for the other:

      I shall arise and go to my father and shall say unto him
      ...

   How jaunty the words are now; how cocksure; how
   hypocritical; how they compel the sneering comment, "and the
   poor old blighter will fall for the sob-stuff again."[2]

   Remember, too, how the late Lord Oxford, who was a stylist,
   refused on a famous occasion to surrender the hammer-stroke
   of "shall," even when faced by a conglomeration of sibilants
   that might have daunted the most courageous orator:

      We shall not sheathe the sword that we have not lightly
      drawn...

   Not promise; but prophecy.

   Does anybody, possessing a tool that will do such delicate
   work so easily, really desire to abandon it? It is being
   abandoned. We are letting "shall" and "should" drift out of
   our hands while we labour to do their work, crudely and
   coarsely, with "will" and "would." Even so correct and
   elegant a writer as Mr. Robert Graves is losing his English
   ear and writing: "I would like to," and "I would prefer to."
   Here the use is redundant and not ambiguous; but if we do
   not trouble to distinguish we shall soon lose the power of
   distinguishing. Moreover, if we use "will" or "would"
   wrongly nine times, and the tenth time intend it rightly,
   who, the tenth time, will give us credit for good
   intentions? The gentleman with the forty-three wrong uses
   has perhaps a dozen right uses as well; but amid so great a
   herd of goats his few innocent lambs look like strays.

This was from "The English Language":

   https://www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20170113

I like her essays much more than her detective stores, do
you?

Those interested in the correct usage of `will' and `shall'
may consult "King's English":  https://www.bartleby.com/116/  .

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