Is each and every one of you singular or plural? I searched this subject and found a similar post here but I just want to confirm.
4 Answers
One is singular, so one of you is singular, so each and every one of you is singular.
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What about "any of you"? – tryingtobeastoic May 29 '22 at 18:40
It's singular, but it does not refer to one person from the group -- it refers to all the people from the group, individually.
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Possible alternative answer:
If it were “each one” or “every one”, then the verb would be conjugated according to one, which is singular. In either of these scenarios, it would be “each one is” or “every one is”, others have said.
One could also interpret “each and every one” as being plural, with two subjects: “each [one]” (one is implicit) and “every one”. Just as “Billy and Susie are”, “each [one] and every one are.”
This latter interpretation, while grammatically self-consistent, is likely incorrect (and ambiguous!) in most situations, because “each and every” is a compound determiner or pronoun. In this case, as others have said, the subject (“one”) is singular, and the verb should be conjugated accordingly: “each and every one is”.
It is more common in modern English to hear “each one” or “every one” than “each and every one” because choosing one or the other and removing the “and” avoids the grammatical ambiguity described above.
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1Most of this answer is fine—the ambiguity mentioned may be far-fetched and exceedingly unlikely to ever occur, but it is there in theory. The claim about one being “more correct” than the other, however, is so off that I had to downvote because of it. If you remove the final paragraph, I’ll happily retract my downvote. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Nov 24 '17 at 12:29
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