Skip to main content

grammar - Correct use of will & would?


What would be the correct use of will & would in these sentences?


1) What will happen if I say to my boss that I will not come tomorrow?


2) What will happen if I would say to my boss that I will not come tomorrow?


3) What will happen if I will say to my boss that I will not come tomorrow?


4) What would happen if I would say to my boss that I will not come tomorrow?


There are four sentences which one should I use and in which situation?



Answer



I think there's an implied meaning in using "will" vs. "would" in hypotheticals. In your first example, would and will are both correct. Will, I believe implies a higher level of expected certainty.


By that I mean, if you ask "what will happen" you're expecting the reader to infer that the answerer knows what will happen. If you ask, "what would happen" then the reader will likely infer that the answerer is making an educated guess as to what the result will be.


The following 3 sentences don't appear to be asking what you intend to ask.


The second example means, "what will happen if I am the kind of person who would actually say to my boss that I'm not coming into work tomorrow?"


The third means, "what will happen if I will say to my boss . . .?" This is a great example of how will and would have different probability assertions. The answer to this question is "you will say to your boss that you will not come tomorrow."


The fourth is just like the second except that there's an implied speculation.


Revision: After working through some of your questions in the comments, I believe I realize the problem you're having.


It appears you're looking at the future condition and expecting to put the verb in the future tense. Id est, "I will say." I believe these are called conditional sentences, specifically future conditional sentences.


There are two general forms in English:



If/When - Future Condition - Simple Present Result
If/When - Simple Present Condition - Future Result



So, your question is technically, "If I say to my boss today that I'm not coming in tomorrow, what will happen?" In English, we can arrange this question to be, "What will happen tomorrow if I say to my boss today that I'm not coming in?"


If you were to ask, "what will happen if I will say to my boss that I'm not coming to work," you could rearrange that to be "If I will say to my boss that I'm not coming to work, what will happen." I think that's how other posters have read it (and that's how I read it) and that's why it sounds confusing.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditional_sentence http://www.englishpage.com/conditional/futureconditional.html


Or, Google "Future Real Conditionals."


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Is 'efficate' a word in English?

I routinely hear the word "efficate" being used. For example, "The most powerful way to efficate a change in the system is to participate." I do not find entries for this word in common English dictionaries, but I do not have an unabridged dictionary. I have checked the OED (I'm not sure if it is considered unabridged), and it has no entry for "efficate". It does have an entry for "efficiate", which is used in the same way. Wordnik has an entry for "efficate" with over 1800 hits, thus providing some evidence for the frequency of use. I personally like the word and find the meaning very clear and obvious when others use it. If it's not currently an "officially documented" word, perhaps its continued use will result in it being better documented.
Post a Comment
Read more