When do you use 'should' for advice / recommendation?

Example: "You should add a test for that edge case before merging."

When do you use 'should' for expectation?

Example: "The deploy should finish in about five minutes."

← All modal verbs

Modal verb

should

should + base verb (no 's', no 'to')

Uses

Advice / recommendation

“You should add a test for that edge case before merging.”

Expectation

“The deploy should finish in about five minutes.”

Common mistakes

✕“We should to refactor this module.”

✓“We should refactor this module.”

✕“He shoulds fix the typo.”

✓“He should fix the typo.”

Choose the correct modal

Pick the modal that fits the meaning of each sentence.

You add a test for that edge case before merging.

The deploy finish in about five minutes.

Spot the correctly formed sentence

Only one option follows the rules for modal verbs. Pick it.

Previous: must Next modal: would

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Written by

Roxana Lafuente

Lingua-e's founder

Roxana Lafuente is a software engineer with 8+ years of experience. At the beginning of her career, even though she had already passed the First Certificate in English, she still froze every time she had to speak up in the daily standup. That was a gap nobody was fixing. After 2,000+ standups, she figured out what actually builds fluency: practice that looks like your real work. She built Lingua-e so other developers wouldn't have to take the long road to feel confident working in an international development environment.