Everyone vs. Every One?
The word everyone is a pronoun used to discuss a group of people. The phrase every one is used to identify individual people, places, or things within the same group.
The word everyone is a pronoun used to discuss a group of people. The phrase every one is used to identify individual people, places, or things within the same group.
Understanding the difference between the word everyone and the phrase every one is difficult because when spoken aloud, they both use the same letters and sound nearly identical. Don’t be fooled, though: everyone and every one does not mean the same thing and are very different from one another. Every one is a phrase and represents two words. Every and everyone are individual words.
Another way to understand the difference between Everyone and every one is to recognize how similar they are to everything and every thing. The biggest difference is that everyone describes a group of people, and everything describes a group of inanimate subjects. Similarly, everyone can be used interchangeably with everybody.
What makes everyone and every one similar is the adjective every. Depending on what you’re trying to communicate, every can represent a group of subjects that may be indefinite or known in size.
For example, if you said, “every domestic cat in your country is outside,” you could be talking about 10 or 100,000 cats. But if you already established how there are only 20 cats in your country, the reader would know you communicated, “there are 20 cats outside in my country.”
Every can be used to describe quantities of people, places, things and can be used in past, present, or future tense. When using the word every one, however, you redirect the attention of your reader from a group of subjects to address a singular subject one by one.
The word everyone is an indefinite pronoun and means, each person, or everybody, and refers to an established quantity of people. Unless contextually specified, everyone is an acceptable substitute for non-gendered indefinite pronouns.
Everyone is singular because the reader already knows you’re talking about a collective group of people taking a singular action. Each person is apart of everyone and everyone as a group is taking collective action within the sentence. The singular pronoun paired with a singular verb is called a subject-verb agreement.
*Note on Subject-Verb Agreement: American English grammar teaches us to use singular nouns with singular verbs. However, it’s not uncommon to see indefinite pronouns used in the singular or plural verb form within British English grammar.
Every one is used in a sentence to point out multiple, individual items within a subject group. Every allows you to convey that you’re identifying all relevant items concerning the one person, place, or thing.
The phrase every one is singular because it identifies a single person, place, or thing within a group in relation to an action or how the single noun is described.
Which is Correct: everyone or every one? Choose the correct form of everyone or every one within the following questions:
(1) Where did __________ go this afternoon?
(2) Sometimes it feels like __________ on social media is having more fun than us.
(3) Can you believe that __________ of her car tires is flat today?
(4) Each and __________ the stars in the sky have emitted light for millions of years.
(5) __________ of my Google searches mentions how __________ is obsessed with Kim Kardashian.
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