Discussion Groups / English Usage / July 2009

1, 3 and 4 are fine, though the uncontracted form "I am" sounds a little formal
for the sort of statement concerned.

For some reason 2 doesn't work.  I can see two reasons: the whole doesn't quite
work quite so well when inverted, and also watching TV and writing are not
events, they are continuous processes.  So "before I switch on the TV, I'm
unplugging the hair-dryer" is fine.

This one also seems to be in the very near future (perhaps because one doesn't
plan this sort of thing very far ahead), whereas item 1, for instance, could
easily be a month hence.

Katy

In message
<feafd96a-f25f-47c0-a223-ee3ad5f55bac@g23g2000vbr.googlegroups.com>,
Marius Hancu <Marius.Hancu@gmail.com> writes

They look perfect to me.

(BrE) in 2. I'd definitely use 'going to write'. AmE may vary.

Marius Hancu:

All of these are fine.

They are mostly harmless, as people have said, although only in
conversational style.  To my North American ear, they convey a sense
of urgency or determination that isn't present in the future or even
the auxiliary "am going to" in the same contexts: the use of the
present progressive seems to make the expressed intention almost into
an actuality.  For me, the future-tense equivalent would be "I will",
not "I shall" (and not "I'll", maybe for the same reason that others
have preferred "I am going" to "I'm going" -- the phrase needs a
certain emphasis to have its proper effect).

Numbers 1, 3, and 4 are identical in form.

Generally, either the terminate or the progressive present can be used to
show futurity when some contextual marker of that futurity is attached:
"The ship sails _Wednesday_"; "He is arriving _soon_."  Thus, "I'm
leaving" is satisfactory, and the prepositional phrase that follows it in
each of the three parallel forms is simply that marker.

Number 2 is, I believe, technically correct but, for some reason,
unidiomatic.  One could say "Before I do anything, I'm calling my lawyer"
without raising eyebrows, but the exact casting above rankles.  Even a
simple rearrangement sounds better: "I'm writing a letter to my parents
before I watch TV."

More acceptable (to my sensibilities) if the original order is to be
retained would be "Before I watch TV, I'm going to write a letter to my
parents"; "am going to" in connection with a dependent infinitive usually
has the force of a pure future auxiliary (but can have other shadings of
meaning).