Modal verbs

Will and would for habitual behaviour

Will

Will can be used to talk about people's habitual actions or their characteristic behaviour.

• He will spend hours at a time on the Internet.
  (= He habitually spends hours at a time on the Internet.)
• They will spend hours on the beach every summer.
• Tom won't get home before sunrise at the weekends.

Will can be used in the contracted form.

• He'll talk to himself for hours.

Will can be stressed (emphasised) in a sentence. This expresses criticism of a habitual action or characteristic.

• She will arrive late for dinner parties.
• He will wear those awful sweaters.

Would

Would is used to talk about people's habitual actions or their characteristic behaviour in the past.

• My mother would go really quiet when she was angry.
• We'd stay up late talking about politics, but we wouldn't actually do anything.

Other ways of talking about habitual behaviour

Be in the habit of + -ing and the adverbs habitually, always, usually and regularly can also be used to talk about habitual actions and characteristics.

• On my day off I am in the habit of spending all morning in bed.
• She habitually watches six hours of TV a day.
• On a good day I usually get to work at nine.
• Some dogs regularly bark for no reason.

Be + forever + -ing describes habitual actions, especially of an annoying nature.

• He was forever stuffing popcorn in his mouth.
• They're forever coming home late and making lots of noise.

Keep + -ing also describes repeated actions that are annoying.

• You keep making so much noise!
• She keeps turning up late to all the meetings.

Used to + infinitive describes habitual past actions or states.

• I used to get up early, but I don't anymore.
• We used to live in a tiny flat near the airport.