A Fairly Common Grammatical Misunderstanding

There is a grammatical misunderstanding which people use in both colloquial and written English which I find a bit annoying, partly because I find that I cannot always know what is the person’s intended meaning behind the statement.

Read the following sentences:

• What if everyone is not at the park?

• What if no one is at the park?

• What if not everyone is at the park?

I call the first sentence a grammatical misunderstanding, not a grammatical error, because the first sentence does make sense and follows correct grammar. However, the person’s intended meaning behind the sentence may not be what his/her listeners understand.

• “No one is...” means that there is not anyone, not a single person, in the given instance.

• “Not everyone is...” refers to the fact that there is a part of “everyone” which is not in a given instance.

• “Everyone is not…” is simply a different wording of “no one is,” putting emphasis on the fact that the whole – the “everyone” – is not in a given instance. A speaker or writer may intend to communicate that “not everyone” is in a given instance, but because they say that “everyone is not” in the given instance, that gives the indication that “no one” is in the given instance.

Does this make sense?

~ Fintan