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Both shall and will may be contracted to -'ll, most commonly in affirmative statements where they follow a subject pronoun. Their negations, shall not and will not, also have contracted forms: shan't and won't (although shan't is rarely used in North America, and is becoming rarer elsewhere too). See English auxiliaries and contractions.
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.
A modal verb is a type of verb that contextually indicates a modality such as a likelihood, ability, permission, request, capacity, suggestion, order, obligation, necessity, possibility or advice.
More generally, as complement of any of the modal verbs can, could, may, might, must, shall, should, will, would (including would rather), and also dare and need in their modal uses: I can speak Swedish. Need you use so much flour? I dare say he will be back. As complement of the expression had better: You had better give back that telephone.
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Clearly this is an exceptional case where shall is better. --Sluggoster 09:31, 5 November 2007 (UTC) 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.
[17] [18] (There are situations where would is used in British English too in seemingly counterfactual conditions, but these can usually be interpreted as a modal use of would: If you would listen to me once in a while, you might learn something.) [19] [20] In cases in which the action in the if clause takes place after that in the main clause ...