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Every one or everyone?

We use every one, written as two words, to refer back to a noun we have already mentioned:

  • I received more than a hundred letters from him while I was away and I’ve kept every one.

Everyone, written as one word, means ‘every person’:

  • Everyone enjoyed themselves.

We use every one of before pronouns and determiners:

  • There are 107 two-letter words in the dictionary and John Catto, an Aberdeen lorry driver, knows every one of them.
  • When Jenkins joined the bank, one of his first acts was to make every one of the bank’s employees reapply for their jobs.
See also
  • Everyone, everybody, everything, everywhere