Would/Will

Question

I will be grateful if you can do it.I would be grateful if you can do it.I can't seem to wrap my head around this. Are they interchangeable?Thank you

Philip · Accepted Answer

I will be grateful if you can do it. (if you do it)
I would be grateful if you could do it. (if you did it)

SwagCmo · Answer

"I would be grateful if you do/can do it"  is not wrong either.

CalifJim · Answer

AnonymousI will be grateful

The real future. This usually goes with a present tense clause. (if you can do it)

AnonymousI would be grateful

The imagined future. The usually goes with a past tense clause. (if you could do it)
___________

In addition, "would" and "could" show more deference to the addressee than "will" and "can", so mixing "would" with "can" (or "will" with "could") may be giving a slightly mixed message.
______

To be completely polite, as with strangers, use "would" and "could". To be more casual, as with people you know well, you can use "will" and "can", but even then, "would" and "could" are commonly used.

CJ

Laborious · Answer

Dear Calif Jim, your posts have always been a great help to me and to many other learners of this language.

In your above post, you explained the difference between 'I will be grateful' and 'I would be grateful' saying that with 'will' the future is 'real' and with 'would' the future is 'imagined'. Could you please explain a little bit more about 'real' future and 'imagined' future? I mean how is it possible for us to tell that something is 'real' or that something will 'really' happen in the future? Does it (preferring one over the other) all depend on the 'speaker'... how sure s/he is about the future? Aren't we imagining (about the future) in both the cases, please?

Thank you.

CalifJim · Answer

Laboriouswith 'will' the future is 'real' and with 'would' the future is 'imagined'

Yes. These are the traditional explanations of those words. They are not philosophically or logically accurate though, so they do cause confusion. The future always has to be imagined in some sense, so there is a way of understanding this topic in which both "will" and "would" are imagined. That's what causes the confusion. Maybe we should say that "will" is the future which we truly anticipate, and "would" is the future we are only guessing about as a theoretical possibility.

Or maybe it is better to say that "the real future" is the future that we are very confident will happen. We can't imagine it not happening. (There's that word "imagine" again.) We almost feel that we are commanding ourselves or perhaps promising ourselves to "be grateful" (in our example) when we use "will". By extension, we are urging the listener to see the situation as one that will definitely come about, so in effect we are commanding (very, very indirectly) the listener to do it because we have already said that we will be grateful. Moreover, we are definitely waiting for some moment to come when we will show our gratefulness. And that moment is "when you can do it".

"The imagined future", as I have used it in my explanation above, might simply be a future that we are less confident about. Maybe your being able to do it is less certain. We are making more of a guess. This form has a less commanding feel to it.

CJ

Would/Will

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