User:Robbiemuffin/Using English Grammar Graphics/Future tense

From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository
Jump to navigation Jump to search


Future Simple[edit]

the Future Simple
In normal use, it expresses a future event. It includes a continuous-like form (are doing/will do) which nonetheless still expresses an event wholly contained in the future.
  • I will not do all the housework myself!
  • We are going to the movies.
  • I will be late to work today.
  • I won't tell anyone.


Future Continuous[edit]

Future Continuous
  • Are you going to be waiting for her when her plane arrives tonight?
  • Yes, I will be waiting for her when her plane arrives tonight.


Future Perfect[edit]

the Future Perfect
  • You will have perfected your English by the time you come back from the U.S.
  • How many countries are you going to have visited by the time you turn 50?
the Non-Continuous sense of the Future Perfect
on a personal note, I have no idea why this distinction 
is drawn, it is so fragile.

The Non-Continuous sense (contrast with Future Perfect Continuous) of the Future perfect is just like the general sense, except that it implies a definite beginning prior to the now of the sentence. In some sense, all sentences imply a definite beginning and end (try creating a timeless phrase), but here we exclude durations that go to the beginning of their context (my age, the history of mankind, the age of the earth, the age of the universe). For example:

  • I will have been in London for six months by the time I leave.

but not:

  • I will have been to every continent before I die. (excluded because the definite beginning is the beginning of the context: my life)


Future Perfect Continuous[edit]

the Future Perfect
The dotted line in this image details the point after which the continued event is instantiated.
  • He will have been jogging for over an hour before he is finished.
  • She is going to have been working at that company for three years when it finally closes.