Hamed
British English: 'In future' vs 'From now on'. Example: - Human beings will live on the Moon in future. - Human beings will live on the Moon from now on. I know that these two mean the same thing in British English, but which one is used in spoken English? And which one is more formal? Thank you.
Feb 19, 2017 6:11 PM
Answers · 10
2
I'm afraid your first sentence is not correct. "When “future” means “the time or the events that will come after the present”, it is always used with the definite article." This is the case for both BrE and AmE. In the first example, you need to use 'in the future.' Human beings will live on the moon from now on. This means that from this day forward (or from this moment in time) humans will live on the moon. Human beings will live on the moon in the future. At some unspecified point in the future human beings will live on the moon. Human beings will live on the moon in future. This is not correct. Examples of 'in future' and 'from now on' meaning the same thing. In future you must make sure you hand in your homework on time. From now on you must make sure you hand in your homework on time.
February 19, 2017
2
They don't mean the same thing actually. The first one "Human beings will live on the Moon in future." means that in the future (at an unspecified time) humans will live on the moon. You don't know when it will happen but you think that it will happen. The second one "Human beings will live on the Moon from now on." would mean that humans have arrived on the moon and that they will continue to live there into the future. So essentially the difference is the first one is something that will happen but you're not sure when, and the other one has happened and will continue to happen into the future.
February 19, 2017
1
In my opinion, maybe some of the confusion here is that your example does not fit well. "In future" and "from now on" have pretty much the same meaning, in my opinion, so you are right about that. Also, as you say in your comment "in the future" has a distinct meaning. However, the example about people living on the moon is more likely to go with "in the future" rather than "in future/from now on". That is really do with immediate future and therefore unlikely to apply to something as speculative or as general as living on the moon. I don't know if this helps or not. My answer to your initial question would be "equally likely to be used, neither is more formal than the other".
February 19, 2017
1
They can be used the same way but are actually different. 'From now on...' means that something has changed, and that from this time on they will be done in the new way. 'In future...' should be 'in the future' and refers to something that isn't currently happening but will do at some point. 'In future...' is usually used as a warning or suggestion - 'In future, make sure you do your homework before coming to class.' 'You should be more prepared in future.'
February 19, 2017
We would be very unlikely say either of these sentences. If we're talking about something that might happen in the far distant future, we wouldn't say 'in future' : we'd say 'in the future'. The phrase 'in the future' is the opposite of 'at the moment'. This is not going to happen immediately, so we say : Human beings will live on the moon in the future. We use 'in future', as a synonym of 'from now on', for something which is going to start happening right away. For example: In future, all enquiries will be dealt with by the Customer Services department. From now on, all enquiries will be dealt with by the Customer Services department. We'd use this to notify people of a change which will take immediate effect.
February 19, 2017
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