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Ant_222 Posted 15 years ago
Grammar
The Future Perfect
Hello all,
Although I do understand the meaning of this tense in plain vanilla contexts like examples in the grammar books, I have trouble dealing with it in real life.
I am reading a book about assembly language programming for the ZX Spectrum, and in the beginning of the chapter about scanning the keyboard, it reads:
«The more numerate of you will have noticed that the Spectrum has in fact got 40 keys. These appear as four rows of 10, but the computer finds it easier to consider them as eight half-rows of five keys, on account of there being less than 10 bits in a byte.»
What is this tense supposed to mean here? Is it a literate form of "should have noticed" or "should already know" or "will notice without the author's hint"? And maybe it is one of those cases when "will" and "would" do not express future time?
Thank you in advance,
Anton
Although I do understand the meaning of this tense in plain vanilla contexts like examples in the grammar books, I have trouble dealing with it in real life.
I am reading a book about assembly language programming for the ZX Spectrum, and in the beginning of the chapter about scanning the keyboard, it reads:
«The more numerate of you will have noticed that the Spectrum has in fact got 40 keys. These appear as four rows of 10, but the computer finds it easier to consider them as eight half-rows of five keys, on account of there being less than 10 bits in a byte.»
What is this tense supposed to mean here? Is it a literate form of "should have noticed" or "should already know" or "will notice without the author's hint"? And maybe it is one of those cases when "will" and "would" do not express future time?
Thank you in advance,
Anton
Top answer
In this case "will" is used to refer to what is likely. It is likely that you have already noticed that the spectrum......
- In this case "will" is used to refer to what is likely.
- It is likely that you have already noticed that the spectrum......
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4 Answers
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In this case "will" is used to refer to what is likely.
It is likely that you have already noticed that the spectrum......
It is likely that you have already noticed that the spectrum......
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Ant_222maybe it is one of those cases when "will" and "would" do not express future time?Yes. It is one of those cases.
Ant_222The more numerate of you will have noticed that ...Personally, I do not consider this truly a case of "future perfect", despite the form. This turn of phrase is sometimes classified as an
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