Grammar Help with These Words
By Annette Rey
Do yourself a favor and print a list of these words and tape them at eye level somewhere in your work space. You will thank me later.
Here is INSTANT help with words that can stop a writer dead in his fast-flow writing. A list close-by will keep your cursor moving furiously.
All of these pronouns take a singular verb!
Anyone
Anybody
Anything
Everyone
Everybody
Everything
Whatever
Whoever
Someone
Somebody
Something
No one
Nobody
Nothing
So –
Everybody who liked carrots was sitting outside.
Because carrots is plural, you might be tempted to use the plural verb were. But the subject of the sentence is everybody which is singular. The verb tense must agree with the subject, so when you are using a singular subject, you must use a singular verb.
Short but sweet!