Re: Proposed ballot for the constitutional amendment
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 Oliver.Elphick@lfix.co.uk
Isle of Wight, UK http://www.lfix.co.uk/oliver
GPG: 1024D/3E1D0C1C: CA12 09E0 E8D5 8870 5839 932A 614D 4C34 3E1D 0C1C
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"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
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