The axiomatic presentation of modal systems and the standard formulations of natural deduction and sequent calculus for modal logic are reviewed, together with the difficulties that emerge with these approaches. Generalizations of standard proof systems are then presented. These include, among others, display calculi, hypersequents, and labelled systems, with the latter surveyed from a closer perspective.

We show, first, that the normalization procedure for S4 modal logic presented by Dag Prawitz in [5] does not work. We then develop a new natural deduction system for S4 classical modal logic that is logically equivalent to that of Prawitz, and we show that every derivation in this new system can be transformed into a normal derivation.