Hi everyone, I searched despedir-se in Smart Review and found a bunch of conjugations where the ending comes after -se: despedir-se-ão, despedir-se-á etc. It looks weird. ChatGPT says it’s an official way of writing, and in common talk it’s “se despedirão” for example, even without negation or anything that pulls the clitic before the verb.
Is there a generalization of this so I can know for sure which one to use and when, even with other verbs?
Thank you 
@jonatas , the se pronoun here follows the same rules of placement of other object pronouns (see Object Pronouns in Portuguese | Practice Portuguese). This means that in the absence of a ‘magnetic’ word, it’s not acceptable to place it before the verb in European Portuguese. By default, it’ll appear after the verb in most cases, except in the future tense (which is the one you saw), where it must be placed in the middle of the verb. So:
→ only correct option by default in the future tense
→ always incorrect, because this placement is only correct in tenses other than the future or the conditional mood, e.g. despedem-se
→ only correct in the presence of a ‘magnetic’ word, e.g. a negationOur preference in casual speech is to use the so-called informal future and say vão despedir-se/vão-se despedir instead of despedir-se-ão. With the informal future, since you have a verb phrase and not a single verb, the placement after either verb is allowed by default (see Clitic Pronouns in Verb Phrases | Practice Portuguese)
Thank you for the detailed reply untangling this!