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!