Page:The king's English (IA kingsenglish00fowlrich).pdf/153

Rh and the future are absolutely identical, so that what he intends may be confidently stated as a future fact. In the first example the desired submissiveness, in the other two the desired imperiousness, supercilious or passionate, are attained by the same impersonality.

Before giving the rule for second-person questions, we observe that questions generally follow the rule of the class of statement they correspond to. This was shown in the pure system (Rule 1). There are no questions (apart from those already accounted for by the pure system) belonging to the coloured future (Rule 2). In the plain future (Rule 3), first and third person questions are like the plain-future statements. But second-person questions under the plain future invariably use Sh. or W. according as the answer for which the speaker is prepared has Sh. or W. Care is necessary, however, in deciding what that answer is. In Should (would) ''you like a bathe? should is almost always right, because the answer expected is almost always either Yes, I should, or No, I should not'', the question being asked for real information. It is true that Would you like? is very commonly used, like the equally wrong I would like; but it is only correct when the answer is intended to be given by the asker:—No, of course you would not. A clearer illustration of this is the following sentence, which requires Sh. or W. according to circumstances: Will (shall) you, now so fresh and fair, be in a hundred years nothing but moiddering dust? This might possibly be asked in expectation of an answer from the person apostrophized—Yes, I shall. Much more probably it would be asked in expectation of the answer from the speaker himself to his own question—''Alas! yes, you will''. And shall ought to be used for the question only in the first case, will in the second case. Similarly, Ah, yes, that is all very well; but will (shall) you be able to do it? Use will if the answer is meant to be No, of course you will not; shall, if the answer expected is Yes, I shall, or No, I shall not.

In practice, Sh. is more commonly required, because