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We thank everyone who have donated, helped set up, etc.

Is "have" correct or "has"?

Ben
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Pam Posey
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1 Answers1

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"We thank everyone who has donated" is correct. This is called subject-verb agreement.

The subject ("everyone") is singular, and "who" reflects the subject's number. Therefore the auxiliary verb "has" in the relative clause must be singular too.

Words such as either, neither, everyone, everybody, anyone, anybody, someone, none or each, are singular and need a singular verb.

As we just said, don’t be fooled if a singular subject is followed by plural nouns. For example, when you write “each of my daughters,” make sure the verb agrees with the singular subject each instead of the plural noun daughters.

And the singular subject “everyone who knows my daughters” should be followed by the singular predicate “is impressed by them,” not “are impressed by them.”

(www.dailywritingtips.com)

Community
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A.P.
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    Who reflects the intrinsic number of its antecedent, which governs verb agreement in the relative clause. Quantifiers vary in their intrinsic grammatical number; all and any are plural -- We thank all who have donated, and We thank any who have donated. – John Lawler Nov 12 '15 at 19:21
  • Thank you, John. I've edited the answer to include some of your valuable input. – A.P. Nov 12 '15 at 21:25
  • In my experience, UK English speakers are more likely to use a noun as a group, non-singular, entity. For example, "The engineering department have modified the source code for the firmware to fix the reported bug." In the USA, we're much more likely to use the singular verb in such an instance. – Tim Ward Nov 12 '15 at 21:37