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Structure: ‘all vs every 2’

Previously we talked about ‘all vs every’ here. This time in our structure help we intend to add some more information about these two words and talk about some specific situations where students make mistakes. Let’s look at some of those.

Firstly, when we talk about people, we don’t use ‘all’, so we can’t say ‘all people’. In this type of situation we normally say ‘everybody’ or ‘everyone’. We can however, say ‘all of us / you / them’, but this is less common than ‘everyone’ or ‘everybody’.

We can’t normally use ‘all’ without a noun. We can’t say ‘all was good’, we have to say ‘everything / everyone was good’.

We can use all to mean ‘the only thing’, so we can say ‘all I said was that it is a good idea’.

Even though it seems incorrect, ‘every / everybody / everyone / everything are singular words so they require singular verb conjugations.

Everyone takes their seat after boarding a plane.
Everything makes sense now that you explained it to me.

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