When do you use shall and will?
NOT A TEACHER
(1) Mr. Henry Fowler was an English gentleman who wrote books on "good"
English. He said that nobody could use "shall" properly
unless s/he was
born into an upper-class British family
!
(2) Here in the United States, it is now used by ordinary people like me mostly
in questions:
Shall we dance?
It's very cold. Shall I turn on the heater?
(3) It's occasionally used in other situations:
(a) Let's go, shall we? (You cannot say "will we?")
(b) Violations shall be punished by fines or imprisonment. (official government statements)
(4) Here is what one well-educated British journalist (who was very prominent before World War II) once said: "I think I
should die if I ceased writing." Probably most people (at least here in the States) would say
would.
Sources:
The Grammar Book by Mesdames Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman.
Modern American Usage by Wilson Follett.