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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.
dynamic modality, [2] which may be distinguished from deontic modality in that, with dynamic modality, the conditioning factors are internal – the subject's own ability or willingness to act [3] The following sentences illustrate epistemic and deontic uses of the English modal verb must: epistemic: You must be starving.
The first English grammar, Bref Grammar for English by William Bullokar, published in 1586, does not use the term "auxiliary" but says: All other verbs are called verbs-neuters-un-perfect because they require the infinitive mood of another verb to express their signification of meaning perfectly: and be these, may, can, might or mought, could, would, should, must, ought, and sometimes, will ...
The future progressive or future continuous combines progressive aspect with future time reference; it is formed with the auxiliary will (or shall in the first person; see shall and will), the bare infinitive be, and the present participle of the main verb. It is used mainly to indicate that an event will be in progress at a particular point in ...
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 ...
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The King's English is a book on English usage and grammar. It was written by the brothers Henry Watson Fowler and Francis George Fowler and published in 1906; [1] it thus predates by twenty years Modern English Usage, which was written by Henry alone after Francis's death in 1918.