Everyone and Every One

Everyone and Every One

Hello! This week on Ask a Teacher we answer a question from Abdumajid in Uzbekistan.

Question:

Can you tell me (with) the uses of "Everyone " and "Every one?" Thanks in advance.

Abdumajid, Uzbekistan

Answer:

Dear Abdumajid,

Thanks for writing to us. These words are like some others that can be hard to understand for English learners. Let us begin with “everyone.” It is a singular pronoun used when we talk about a group of people. Here is an example:

Danny brought enough birthday cake for everyone to eat.

You can use “everybody” in the same way as “everyone.” This is a good test of whether “everyone” is the correct form for your statement. You should always be able to use “everybody” instead of “everyone.”

Everybody gave money for Danny’s birthday presents.

Every one

Now let’s discuss “every one.” We use this expression to talk about the individuals or individual things in a group. The expression often follows a general statement and comes before the word “of.” Returning to the birthday party, we can find this example:

Danny got six presents and every one of them made him smile.

Note that we cannot use the singular pronouns “everyone” or “everybody” to talk about objects. We only use them for people. But we can use “every one” if we want to talk about people or things. For example,

At the end of the party, every one of the guests thanked Danny for inviting them.

That statement tells us that, as each guest left, they individually said “Thank you” to Danny.

Anyone

A similar set of words is “anyone” and “any one.” The same rule is true of these: you can use “anyone” or “anybody” only for people and you can use “any one," that is, two separate words, for people or objects. Here are examples:

Did anyone lose their keys? I found these on the table.

There are five cars in driveway. The keys could be for any one of them.

I hope this helps you understand the difference between “everyone” and “every one,” Abdumajid. Remember that “everyone” is for groups of people and “every one” is for individual objects or people.

What question do you have about American English? Send us an email at learningenglish@voanews.com

And that’s Ask a Teacher.

I’m Jill Robbins.

Dr. Jill Robbins wrote this lesson for VOA Learning English. Mario RItter, Jr. was the editor.

Here are some sentences you can try to complete with everyone, every one, anyone, or any one.

1. I told ________ about the problem last night
2. Have you counted __________ of the trucks?
3. We got three pizzas. I did not get to taste_______ of them.
4. Albert thought _________ was gone when he arrived.
5. Please put a tray of food on ________ of the tables.

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­__________________________________________________

Words in This Story

singular – adj. (grammar) showing or indicating no more than one thing

pronoun –n. (grammar) a word that is used instead of a noun or noun phrase

Do you have a question for the teacher? We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section.