“I will follow you to the ends of the earth,” replied Susan passionately.
“It will not be necessary,” said George. “I am only going down to the coal-cellar. I shall spend the next half-hour or so there.”
P.G. Wodehouse, quoted by R.W. Burchfield
14Jul05 — 16
I feel sure I should understand that but I don’t. What does it mean please?
I have problems with ‘which’ and ‘that’
Follow the link I gave under the quotation and you will be enlightened:
A man was walking along the promenade at Blackpool when he heard a cry from the sea, “I will drown and no-one will save me!” He looked out to sea and there was a man flailing his arms in the water, but, being a pedantic git, like myself, he chose to ignore the cry and carried on his walk, thinking that the man in the water was determined to commit suicide.
Except in technical writing (western side of the pond) …
The software shall accept a-z, 0-9 as inputs…
is a specific contractual requirement.
The developers will only use approved compilers … is a mere technical suggestion.
Which / that… which as a choice of specific number, that is a choice of unspecified number. This is an explanation that might suffice, or rather, of all the possible explanations this is one which might suffice….
Just a Hungarian guess…
Ariadne wrote:
That’s because—in typically perverse English fashion—the rule reverses in the second and third persons.
PooterGeek Snr wrote:
Shouldn’t that be:
?
I shall give that a go, George.
Until I read Lynne Truss I was insecure about the semi-colon but it seems that I was right along, so now I use it with abandon.
Such as: here; and then again, here; and here; or even here; but not here.
1) ‘[S]hall expresses a simple future. “I shall be in Oxford tomorrow afternoon.” Will conveys a firm intention, or determination. “I will go to Oxford, whatever you say.” ‘ But in Scottish English, versa vice.
2) that/which:- “That” defines (e.g. The house that Jock built) while “which” refers (e.g. The house, which Jock built, stood on the shore.).
3) “The developers will only use approved compilers” would be better as “The developers will use only approved compilers”. (Or “shall” as the case may be.)
(1) and (2) are mere matters of convention, but I have empirical evidence supporting my advice in (3).
In the past, the difference between ‘will’ and ‘shall’ was well known. In the ‘I’ and ‘We’ forms, ‘shall’ is the simple future, and will is the emphatic future. In the other pronouns, it is reversed – ‘will’ is the simple form whereas ‘shall’ is the emphatic.
This is why one would say “Shall I fetch that for you?” or “Shall we dance?” and not “Will I fetch that for you?” or “Will we dance”
This is also why one would say “Will he deliver?” rather than “Shall he deliver”, because you are using the simple future.
However ‘shall’ has all but died out in modern english
On the question of “shall” or “will”, I have a problem. I am teaching English to a Spanish boy. I well know the rule about “I shall, you will” being the simple future and “I will, you shall” being the imperative. I note the comments of others regarding common usage and it troubles me. Should I teach him all “will” to be the only construction of the future? If I do, the use of “shall”, as noted by Pooter Geek Snr., will disappear from the English language and, with it, a fine shade of meaning when communicating. I have similar problems with “me” and “I” which are totally misused by many people.
Jane Corbett:
I’m a great believer in the “pedagogical lie”: teach the simple generalization now and the subtle distinction later. First you tell students that light travels in straight lines as waves. Later, after they’ve understood that, you can blow their minds.
re that/which. Three possibilities: The house that Jack built collapsed. The house which Jack built collapsed. The house, which Jack built, collapsed. The first two feature the so-called restrictive relative pronoun; but which is “correct,” “that” or “which”? Simple. Yanks prefer “that” and Brits prefer “which.” (Just check respective publications—as I recall, in his “Politics and the English Language,” Orwell uses lots of “which”es and, I think, only one “that.”) Yanks even insist, in most grammar books, that only “that” is possible—but cf. FDR’s “a day which will live in infamy.” As for the unrestrictive relative pronoun, you can only use “which”—preceded by a comma: The house, which Jack built, collapsed.
Will / shall, that / which and semicolons – (or perhaps) . . .
We of the English tongue are lucky, oh the subtleties we can amuse ourselves with; poor Johnny foreigner. (Or should that be, ‘with which’?)
Suprisingly no one has drawn attention to ‘that which . . . ‘ And it is that, which I shall claim as my contribution.