RE: Grammar Q

["Chinell, David F (GE Indust, Security)" <David -dot- Chinell -at- GE -dot- com>]

Joyce and all:

I'm jumping in without having read the entire thread, so forgive me if
I'm repeating stuff.

We reserve "will" for indicating temporal things, and try to avoid using
it for causal things. It's difficult to separate causality from
temporality in some cases. It's easy when the result is immediate; not
so easy when the result is delayed.

In your example of the clutch, since you're talking about immediate,
causal things, we wouldn't use "will." So our style is like your second
"unnatural" form of the instruction.

An example of how we'd use "will" might be:

Do not underestimate the value of regular backups. All mechanical
storage devices will fail eventually.

Bear
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