During one of my more recent editions of Grammar 101, Betshopboy asked if I could describe the correct usage of “would” or “will” and when you should use which word. They serve very similar grammatical functions, but the two words cannot be used interchangeably. The rules can be a little muddy, so the best way to learn is with practice and a good proofreader.
Generally speaking, the word would should be used when you are referring to things that happened in the past or events that are hypothetical. This includes predictions made in the past about some event yet to happen in the future. This also includes events that are contingent on other events and, as such, are not certain to happen. Here are a few examples:
If I enjoyed science more, I would have pursued a career in physics.
Do you think he would go if Megan went too?
Would you like me to help you with your luggage?
Jane would always sleep downstairs when my Joe started snoring.
Brad knew the store would be closed today, so he went yesterday.
On the other hand, the word will is generally used when you are referring to events that set to happen in the future. This includes simple predictions and promises. Using “will” instead of “would” also implies a level of certainty, which is why it can be rude to ask someone if she “will” pick you up from the airport rather than if she “would” pick you up from the airport. Here are a few more examples.
We all know that Ed will be late for Dot Com Pho again.
I promise I will pay you back as soon as I can.
It looks like it will be a dark and stormy night.
The Olympics will be starting next February in Vancouver.
After Stephen is done with his car, he will buy another Subaru.
Still having trouble understanding the difference? Try this handy quiz to test your knowledge.
Do you have a suggestion for a future Grammar 101 post? Let me know through the comment form below, since we all need good grammar, right?
Now if you can just get people to spell “would” correctly. 😉 Not as common as some other misspelled words, but the variations on “would” are sometimes, um, interesting.
Thanks for doing this post.
I took the quiz after reading your post and got 9/10 correct.
I got this question wrong:
“I hope we ____ (will/would) be able to do it.”
It’s “will” because it’s something that we are going to do in the future. If it was “I hoped we ___ be able to do it,” then it would be “would” since it’s referring to an event from the past.
Great article Michael. All of your grammar articles are informative and helpful. They have helped me with my writing a lot. Some, like will and would, teach common sense thought processes to think through the word and form of the sentence to make the right choice. Some are just plain, follow the rule types which I don’t even try to figure out I just apply the rule and use it. Thanks for giving us great information to read!
i see…. finally i understood how to separate them.. nice article…
Great post! I did the test and got 100% 😀
I’d be very interested to know if you’ve done any articles like this on punctuation. Specifically, I’d very much like to see a post done on when to use ‘single quotes’ versus “double quotes”.
I’ve just been trying to look through your past “Grammar 101” posts, and it got me thinking: is there any way to just see a list of all the grammar 101 posts?
If you check out the archives page, you can search by title for “grammar 101”.
Yeh, I did think of that, but it came up with some articles that came up with some results that (seemingly) had no relation to grammar 101, so I thought I had done something wrong.
You can try this search in Google too:
“site:michaelkwan.com grammar 101”
You would then get these results.
Ah. Thank you, that works great!