What is the maximum that a shell can hold for electrons? What if there are 31 electrons?? I'm confused...

Which shell in what element?

Since this is not my area of expertise, I searched Google under the key words "electron shell" to get these possible sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_shell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_configuration

I hope this helps. Thanks for asking.