Mar­lene Davis

The word "will" is al­ways and for­ev­er a def­i­nite fu­ture tense word. It is filled with de­ter­mi­na­tion and pur­pose, where­as "would" is not at all em­phat­ic.(I know that pedants will be dis­ap­point­ed in my omit­ting to state that we should not use "will" for all the per­sons–I, you, he, she, it, we, you, they. We should say, "I shall" and "we shall" and not "I will" and "we will," ex­cept to sig­ni­fy spe­cial de­ter­mi­na­tion. How­ev­er, I am so glad to hear and read "will" prop­er­ly used that I de­sist from men­tion­ing the use of "shall" at all.)

I al­so watch close­ly the word­ing of bills and laws in our Par­lia­ment and I won­der if some of their word­ing can stand scruti­ny in a court of law when bills state "would" in­stead of "will" with ques­tion­able im­puni­ty: "Tres­passers would be pros­e­cut­ed."No, tres­passers will be pros­e­cut­ed. It makes a dif­fer­ence in law, one could ar­gue. Re­cent­ly, I no­ticed an ar­ti­cle in the press and I am go­ing to quote some of it be­low, try­ing not to men­tion names and places, in an ef­fort to pro­tect the ig­no­rant. Shock­ing­ly, it comes from a high­ly recog­nised ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tion and was post­ed in one of our news­pa­pers.The re­lease be­low has been cleared of all de­tails that re­veal its ori­gin.

Me­dia re­lease

The (name with­held) as­so­ci­a­tion cel­e­brates its 25th an­niver­sary in fine styleThe (theme of the event) would be the first of its kind.Tick­ets would en­ti­tle pa­trons to the fash­ion show. There would al­so be arte­facts and Panora­ma hits for Car­ni­val 2013 on sale.Pa­trons would al­so be af­ford­ed the op­por­tu­ni­ty to par­tic­i­pate in a raf­fle.The word would here is used in­cor­rect­ly, re­peat­ed­ly in a dogged, de­ter­mined way.The re­lease should read:The theme of the event will be the first of its kind. Tick­ets will en­ti­tle pa­trons to a fash­ion show. There will al­so be arte­facts etc. Pa­trons will al­so be af­ford­ed the op­por­tu­ni­ty to par­tic­i­pate in a raf­fle.Why use would in­stead of will? It amazes me al­ways, since will, the fu­ture tense, apart from be­ing cor­rect, is so much eas­i­er to spell.

Here's a quiz. Read the rules above and in­sert "will" or "would"cor­rect­ly. An­swers are pro­vid­ed be­low.

1. A vis­it­ing cruise ship ...........be ar­riv­ing to­mor­row and .............re­main in port overnight.

2. The weath­er.........be mild for the next two days, but there .........be a change by Tues­day.

3. The guest speak­er...........pre­fer to be in­tro­duced by the chair­man be­fore she speaks.

4. How...........you be able to see in the dark with­out a light?

5. .........you like to join me on a hol­i­day in Greece next Ju­ly?

6. There ............be a staff meet­ing at noon to­day.

7. .............any­one be in the of­fice af­ter 5 pm?

8. They told us that they..............not be long and that they...........dri­ve us home lat­er.

9. ................you choose to live in the city al­ways or .............you pre­fer to move to the coun­try?

10. ...............you be here when I re­turn?

An­swers:

1. will....will 2. will...will 3. would 4. will 5. Would 6. will 7. Will 8. would ....would 9. Would....would 10. Will