The line: from Algini: “\u2014we shall track it, and we will act.”<\/p>\n
I’ll almost lay you money a copyeditor is going to come to a screeching halt and try to draw both statements into uniformity. Which will remove a layer of meaning. And which I shall have to stet. So, I think I WILL insert the [sic] (Latin for ‘thus’) into the text and hope the copyeditor does not fail to strike THAT printer’s notation before it’s set in print.<\/p>\n
Do you read that the quality of copyediting is going down by the stern? You’d be right.<\/p>\n
Here’s the grammar involved, and it’s really quite simple.
\nThe present tense of the verb ‘track’.
\nFirst person means “I,” and “we” (closest to you.)
\nSecond person means “you singular” and “you plural”, ie one, and more than one.
\nThird person means “he, she, it” and “they” farthest from you, over there.<\/p>\n
The rule of shall and will is simple. Shall is only first person when it means future action. “I shall track” and “we shall track.”
\nWill is second and third person when it means future action. “you will track,” “you pl. will track,” “he will track, she will track, it will track, and they will track.”<\/p>\n
NOW, the tricky and subtle bit. The rule totally reverses when it indicates determination <\/em>about the act. If you remotely think this is a distinction without meaning, well, the State of Oklahoma managed to void its inheritance law by screwing up the “he shall track” bit. Instead of “he shall track”, they wrote “he will track,” which made it legally ineffective, and unenforcable by the law.<\/p>\n Just one more of the little slippery slopes American English has been skating down ever since it abandoned grammar instruction in favor of the “people naturally talk right” rule of teaching English.<\/p>\n English is a marvelous edged weapon if you know how to wield it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The line: from Algini: “\u2014we shall track it, and we will act.” I’ll almost lay you money a copyeditor is going to come to a screeching halt and try to draw both statements into uniformity. Which will remove a layer of meaning. And which I shall have to stet. So, I think I WILL insert […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":751,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10,11],"class_list":["post-2109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal","tag-cherryh","tag-fiction_writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/751"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2109\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nIf you say, “I will track,” it’s as good as italicizing ‘will’ and speaking it with emphasis. It is a subtlety of expression which expresses Intent. \ud83d\ude09
\nSo it becomes, by reversing the above rule: for Intent: I will track, we will track. Then: you shall track, you pl. shall track becomes an Order, isn’t that clever?
\nAnd yet one more trick: he shall track, she shall track, it shall track, and they shall track become a Legal Directive.<\/p>\n