The English language has a lot of commonly confused words. If you’re not careful in your writing, you might find yourself misusing them. In this post, we’re going to discuss two such confusing words.
Everyone and every one sound similar, but they have different meanings. Let’s get to know more about these two words and understand the difference between them.
What Does Everyone Mean?
The word everyone is a pronoun that is used to refer to all the people in a group. You can replace this word with everybody, which is slightly less formal. Dictionary.com defines this word as a pronoun, which means everybody or every person within a group.
When to Use Everyone
As mentioned above, you can use this word to refer to all people in a group. See the following examples.
Use of everyone in sentences
- Everyone is invited to my birthday.
- Everyone is going outside.
- Everyone arrived on time.
- It will affect everyone positively.
- Does everyone know what happened that night?
- Everyone is dissatisfied with his own fortune.
- She is always polite to everyone.
- Everyone was curious to learn why he is leaving.
- Everyone is laughing at him behind his back.
- Why is everyone looking so serious?
What Does Every One Mean?
As you can see, every and one are two separate words; every one is a phrase. It refers to each person (each individual) who makes up a group of people. The word can be replaced with each one.
Note: The word, everyone is used to refer to living things only while every one can be used for every single non-living thing within-group. For example:
- Every one of the bananas was tasteless.
- Every one of the eggs in the tray was cracked.
Let’s see some other examples.
Use of every one in sentences
- Each and every one of them wanted to kill us.
- Every one of all the copies must be submitted.
- I have three kids. Every one is dear to me.
- Every one of his suggestions is worth considering.
- I would like to thank every one of you for coming to my party.
- Every one of these oranges is stale.
- Each and every one of the games you asked me to play was interesting.
How to Remember the Difference Between The Two
Remember that the one-word everyone is used for everybody, while the two-word every one can be substituted with each. When deciding whether to use everyone or every one, you may ask yourself the following question:
am I discussing about the group as a whole or indicating individuals within the group?
Always remember that everyone is more general while ever one is more specific.
To get more clarity on the usage of both words, let’s use them in similar sentences.
- Everyone went to the night party.
- Every one of them went to the night party.
- Everyone laughed at him
- Every one of them laughed at him.
We hope this post helps you understand the difference between everyone and every one.
