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Outside DoD, other parts of the U.S. government advise against using the word shall for three reasons: it lacks a single clear meaning, it causes litigation, and it is nearly absent from ordinary speech. The legal reference Words and Phrases dedicates 76 pages to summarizing hundreds of lawsuits that centered around the meaning of the word shall.
shall not (archaic) shan’ shall not shan’t: shall not she’d: she had / she would she’ll: she shall / she will she’s: she has / she is she'd'nt've (informal) she did not have / she would not have should’ve: should have shouldn’t: should not shouldn’t’ve (informal) should not have somebody’s: somebody has / somebody is someone’s
The following sentences illustrate epistemic and deontic uses of the English modal verb must: epistemic: You must be starving. ("I think it is almost a certainty that you are starving.") deontic: You must leave now. ("You are required to leave now.") An ambiguous case is You must speak Spanish.
The English modal auxiliary verbs are a subset of the English auxiliary verbs used mostly to express modality, properties such as possibility and obligation. [a] They can most easily be distinguished from other verbs by their defectiveness (they do not have participles or plain forms [b]) and by their lack of the ending ‑(e)s for the third-person singular.
The will/shall future consists of the modal verb will or shall together with the bare infinitive of the main verb, as in "He will win" or "I shall win". ( Prescriptive grammarians prefer will in the second and third persons and shall in the first person, reversing the forms to express obligation or determination, but in practice shall and will ...
Demonstrations of sentences which are unlikely to have ever been said, although the combinatorial complexity of the linguistic system makes them possible. Colorless green ideas sleep furiously (Noam Chomsky): example that is grammatically correct but based on semantic combinations that are contradictory and therefore would not normally occur.
In English, the future perfect construction consists of a future construction such as the auxiliary verb will (or shall) or the going-to future and the perfect infinitive of the main verb (which consists of the infinitive of the auxiliary verb have and the past participle of the main verb). This parallels the construction of the "normal" future ...
As for shall vs should, my (northwestern US) ears prefer shall but the difference is very slight. Shall focuses on your magnimony, and you may already be half-standing when you say it. Should focuses on your social obligation, and you may have no intention of opening the window unless the other person says "yes". --Sluggoster 09:28, 5 November ...