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My English teacher, who is a native, told us to write an essay about Fate. She made a correction on one of the paragraphs of my essay, and I wanted to make sure if it was valid. This is the paragraph:

Am I to have an accident tomorrow, or maybe, meet someone who'll change my life a year from now? Will Fate determine who will I be in my future? What will I do? Where will I end up? Are the decisions I made lately entirely mine?

My teacher corrected the inversions that are in italics, pointing out that I should have used I will instead of Will I. Is this correct?

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  • Your teacher is correct.
    – nnnnnn
    May 29, 2016 at 3:39

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I would agree with the teacher. The teacher is correct in correcting your first question. The question is not "Who will I be?", it is rather "Will fate determine who I will be?". In this case "who I will be" is a subordinate clause and should not use an interrogative word order.

The second and third questions, as you ask them, essentially ignore the first. While this is certainly something you can do, they make more sense if you think of them as implicitly modifying the first. So the second is read as "(Will fate decide) what I will do?" and the third is (Will fate decide) where I will end up?). Leaving the first part implied is a fairly common literary construction, and makes sense here, as you ask a series of question which are related.

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