On Mon, 2003-10-13 at 20:15, Manoj Srivastava wrote: > > >> your ballot; the voting mechanism shall not be able to decrypt your > >> message. > > I'm no native speaker of english, but that "shall" seems strange to > > me. Maybe a "will" would be more appropriate? > > No. I was taught English which may well be considered archaic > in todays post-modernistic world; however, the usage falls under the > the colored future system (described in > http://www.bartleby.com/116/213.html). > > In an expression of the speaker's (not necessarily the > subject's) wish, intention, menace, assurance, consent, refusal, > promise, offer, permission, command, &c. -- in such sentences the > first person has will/would, the second and third persons > shall/should.
Nevertheless, that use of "shall" is so strange that I had to read the sentence twice to understand it. It is not correct English. The sentence does not fit the grammatical rule you quote, because a voting mechanism is incapable of having or expressing an intention or purpose. It is just a thing, and you are merely describing how it will behave, therefore the proper word to use is "will". -- Oliver Elphick [EMAIL PROTECTED] Isle of Wight, UK http://www.lfix.co.uk/oliver GPG: 1024D/3E1D0C1C: CA12 09E0 E8D5 8870 5839 932A 614D 4C34 3E1D 0C1C ======================================== "And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." Isaiah 2:4 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
