There are 10 students. Each did 1 assessment. Which is right: The teacher must mark everyone's assessment/everyone's assessments?
1 Answer
"Everyone" is singular. So it's "everyone's assessment".
If you want to refer to the assessments collectively, you could say something like "all the students' assessments".
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'Everyone takes a singular verb. But it is most often notionally plural. And plenty of native speakers are using everyone's heads. So except on the most rigorous/prescriptivist test, it is safe to go with heads when you want to stress the multiplicity of heads. Superman didn't fly just over Sue's, Joan's and Lois's heads, he flew over everyone's heads. ' from the duplicate, 'Arm ...'. // The controlling factor here is that everyone does one assessment, so the more usual choice of assessment happily also points the right way. But if everyone did say three assessments .... May 26, 2021 at 10:45
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1"Everyone" being singular is irrelevant here. "Everyone" collectively has more than one assessment. May 26, 2021 at 10:50
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@the-baby-is-you Seeing that each student has one assessment, as the OP says, how can it be irrelevant? "Everyone" is distributive, not collective. Speak collectively by all means, but in that case, you don't mean "everyone".– Rosie FMay 26, 2021 at 10:56