Grammar Check! Churchill’s Speech, or Shall I or Will I Use the Right Auxiliary Verb?

Today’s Grammarbook.com email had an important quote and an important grammar lesson. The quote is from a famous speech of Winston Churchill (cf. box above and the article below), and the grammar lesson is on the proper use of “shall” and “will” as auxiliary verbs.

Here is the first part of the lesson; find the rest at the link below. As you will see, once again there has been a change in language use when it comes to these verbs too – and not always with increased clarity. Yet, while there is some flexibility according to the experts (and maybe some confusion!), we can still follow proper grammar in our use of “shall” and “will.”

Few will ever forget the words spoken by Winston Churchill in June 1940 under the thickening shadow of Nazi aggression:

“We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”

In a moment of such immortal conviction, none would have thought to question whether Churchill was using the correct auxiliary verb to express his nation’s resolve. His words are as powerful and inspiring today as they were almost 80 years ago.

Notwithstanding, if English teachers of the day had reviewed Churchill’s speech before he gave it, they would have alerted the leader to the usage of shall versus will:

• To express a belief regarding a future action or state, use shall. To express determination or promise (as Churchill was), use will. As a further example, a man who slips from a roof with no one around and hangs on to it by his fingers will cry, “I shall fall!” A man who climbs to a roof in order to fall from it will cry, “I will fall!”

• To simply communicate the future tense (without emphasis on determination, promise, or belief) in formal writing, use shall for the first person (I, we) and will for the second and third persons (you, he, she, they): I shall go to the store tomorrow. They will go to the store tomorrow.

Such established grammatical strictures once made discerning shall from will easy for English users. Through the years, however, the words’ functions have blurred; in common writing and speech, they are often interchangeable and seldom precise.

Adding to the matter, style and grammar sources offer differing views on when to use shall or will. The Harbrace College Handbook asserts the auxiliaries are transposable for the first, second, andthird person. It also declares will is more common than shall; shall is used mainly in questions (Shall we eat?) and might also be used in emphatic statements (We shall overcome.).

It further upholds the teaching of Churchill’s day to use shall in the first person and will in the second and third to express the simple future tense or an expectation: I shall stay to eat. He will stay to chat with us.

To communicate determination or promise, however, it slightly departs from the Queen’s classic English. Rather than always use will, it flips its order for the future tense or an expectation (i.e., will in the first person; shall in the second and third). Grammatical form for those intent on falling from a roof would thus be “I will fall!” (first person) or “You shall fall!” (second person).

Source: Shall I or Will I Use the Right Auxiliary Verb? – Grammar and Punctuation