Must, may and might

When I learned grammar these were called auxiliary verbs. Used with a verb they become a verb phrase helping with an action or condition. There are twenty-three auxiliary verbs: is, am, are, was, were, be, being, been, has, have, had, do, does, did, shall, will, should, would, may, might, must, can, could. I can't imagine how confusing it must be for non-English speakers to make their way through this list of auxiliaries, and how to use them. Some speakers of English go overboard with these little crutches.

I recently read a draft report called Draft Report of the Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control . Control is a favorite word of librarians. But what I noticed in this draft report (they are requesting comments) is the overworked auxiliary verbs. The first part of the document is loaded with "must." In case you hadn't noticed from my blog, librarians are fond of dogmatic, strongly worded statements, and are very opinionated. So, in this draft were "must"

continue
step forward
look beyond
realize
begin
do their work
continue
be used
be a part of
analyze
work
devise
be taken
purchase
be derived
be openly arrived at (wordy too)
be created
be pursued
be considered
be usable
be able
be seen
come
achieve

Then after that powerful mandate, the writers soften up a bit and move on to "might"

take on
be shared
have participated
include
be to develop
be to engage
lend
be made
exist
be facilitated

and then finally wimp out altogether with "may"

still conclude
be operated
be forbidden
also lead
be opportunities
also be possible
change
be openly available
not be compatible
change
not provide
prove
be required
potentially be
of most interest
result
benefit
require
be unfamiliar
vary
have changing and expanding needs
be considered
arise
not be optimally applied

If you are a school teacher or a social worker or anyone working in a government agency, you probably use these helping verbs throughout your documents too. I think they mainly contribute to the time it takes to accomplish anything in publically funded agencies. These little verbs might be the reason Google, a start up 9 years ago by two grad students, is stomping out the need for librarians. Now that the Google founders are rich and going all greeny on us, we can expect them to act more like librarians, which will give my profession a chance to catch up.