The Time Traveler's Guide to Grammar

  What shall/will happen?

  The computer within the time machine was having considerable difficulty deciding what it should do about the little human’s sentence. The human had inserted the sentence with much hurry and anxiety, and so the computer wanted to get the human’s meaning right. But by this time the solar cells embedded into the time machine had been ripped off by the wind, and the back-up encyclopedia stored at the time machine’s foundation had shut down due to a power surge and resulting irreparable damage to the mainframe.

  The computer only had enough power to reach into a single moment to gain better clarity into what the human might mean. What better moment than that of when the human girl was writing her book? The computer was struck by its own brilliance.

  Unfortunately for you, it is this moment that the computer was searching for. The moment when the author chose between “will” and “shall.” Quinn, although she had not been paying much attention to that part of Caden’s lesson, she had remembered just enough of it. She remembered that for “I” and “we” she was supposed to use “shall,” whereas “will” is used for second or third person.

  Quinn wrote, “I shall always love you.”

  The problem was that by Quinn’s time period, the words “shall” and “will” were used interchangeably in informal speech and even some formal writing. This made the computer wonder if the human girl had known this grammatical change and still used “shall” because she wanted to vow to love Caden forever but was not certain if she would. This would drastically change what actions the computer would take, making it possible rather than definite that Quinn would fall in love with Caden.

  The computer is looking at this moment, this very instant, where you must decide which interpretation of “shall” you believe is right. It can be a form of “will” that was correctly placed in first person form, or, as a word that was seeking out a new niche in the dictionary with the slightly different connotation of a vow, or intention to do something.

  I will give you two different meanings that the computer could have interpreted, which in turn create two different endings.

  You decide which one is “correct.”