A Word, Please: Speakers shall say whatever they will

History has never been my subject, a fact I attribute to my “cut to the chase” type of thinking. In history, the chase always goes: Dude One fights Dude Two for the right to control Thing A and, when a victor emerges, everyone has to live under dude rule.

I suppose that’s why I never paid much attention to the difference between “shall” and “will.” Not only does the word “shall” reek of musty tomes and long-gone times, the issue itself is all about history: People used to use “shall” a lot, now they use “will,” and, as is always the case with word etymologies, the tug-of-war to decide top dog starts to look like every other power struggle in history.

Then I got this request from a reader named Marilyn: “Would you address the use of ‘shall’ and ‘will’ in a future column? I’ve always been confused as to which one to use and when.”

I wanted so badly to reply, “Yes, I shall,” that it was actually worth researching a subject sure to require slogging through some history. And I wasn’t disappointed.

“Shall” and “will” have both been around for a long time and never have their roles been distinct or even clear. “Shall” got a big boost in the 1400s when the first full English language version of the Bible opted to use it as a translation of a future tense Latin verb that didn’t have an exact English equivalent.

Within a few centuries, “shall” was going strong, though how it differed from “will” still wasn’t clearly defined. Back then, “shall” was usually paired with first-person subjects to express future tense or obligation, while “will” did the same for second- and third-person subjects. But efforts to enshrine that as a rule failed. And “shall” and “will” were used almost interchangeably for hundreds and hundreds of years.

In fact, every attempt to legislate a difference between these words proved ill-conceived. Century after century, “shall” and “will” kept doing similar jobs, and no one could stop them.

Which brings us, at last, to modern times. Here’s what Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage says about how “shall” is used today: It has become a bit fashionable in recent years to disparage its use in American English. Its critics allow that it is entrenched in legal usage... but in other uses, they tend to regard it as affected or precious. Some allowance is made for the expression of determination or resolve, in which it is used with pronouns of all persons.”

Examples given include Douglas MacArthur’s famous “I shall return” and Harry Truman’s less famous “I can’t approve of such goings-on and I shall never approve it.”

What does all of this mean for you, me and especially Marilyn, who was confused about which to use? Well, as regular readers of this column have heard me say before, whenever there’s a lot of crossover between words and you want to know which is correct, the biggest error you can make is assuming that only one or the other is correct. Words evolve in messy fashion, guided by and, in turn, creating our innate “feel” for how they’re used. If “shall” and “will” seem equally correct sometimes, it’s because they are.

So, modern speakers can use “shall” in place of “will” whenever it appears the better choice. Or we can dispense with “shall” altogether. That’s something I could have told you before I slogged through dozens of dudes’ opinions spanning several centuries. And it shows why I like language more than history: I guess I just prefer mob rule to dude rule.

JUNE CASAGRANDE is the author of “The Best Punctuation Book, Period.” She can be reached at [email protected].