Is anyone all one word

Have you ever wondered what the difference is between anyone and any one?

Consider the sentences below;

If any one of your friends knows, please tell them to keep quiet.

Has anyone seen my wallet?

Both of these sentences have used the words anyone and any one correctly, question is can you use them correctly? If you can’t figure out when to use which of these, keep reading as this article will tell you everything about the two words.

Anyone as pronoun:

Anyone is a pronoun and is used to call upon a noun. It means any person at all; anybody:

Did anyone see the accident?

Anyone as a pronoun meaning “anybody” or “any person at all” is written as one word. It is used when there are no qualifications to the grouping. Something could belong to anyone if there are no distinguishing marks or unique factors.

Does anyone have the correct time?

Any one as adjective phrase:

Any one is a combination of two words which is generally not listed in dictionaries except perhaps to distinguish the differences with anyone. Any one is a term that means any single object or person.

Any one of your buddies, if he’s careless enough, could turn out to be your enemy.

Adjective phrase that refers to any single member of a group (of either people or things). Any one is commonly followed by the preposition of.

She never admitted that any one of her pupils, even the ones who were unmistakably tone deaf, were deficient in musical talent.

Examples:

Anyone willing to part with between £20,000 and £200,000 for a week’s holiday can live in the homes of the rich and famous while they are away, order their staff around, and make use of their cars, tennis courts and swimming pools. [The Guardian]

Impressively, everything is available to tweak and tune if you so desire from the very start but the stock settings on each car are good enough to get you around any one of the current 110 track variations. [Scottish Daily Record]

In the United States, spiritual mobilization has long been anyone’s game. [The New York Times]

Anyone or any one:

Anyone or any one, both are grammatically singular, regardless of meaning. But there is a difference in meaning between the one- and two-word versions: when you type anyone, you’re referring to people; when you type any one you may be referring to people, but not necessarily—it depends on what follows or what is understood. For example, perhaps you mean ‘any one of the customers’ (in which case you are referring to people); or maybe you mean ‘any one of the petunias’ or (in which case you are not referring to people). In sum, any one means one of a group (of people or things), rather than one person (anyone) or a bunch of people (everyone).

As phrases become more and more common, they might become truncated into compound words. Today, rail road is railroad, and any one is anyone.

What do we do with the older versions of the phrases, though? Is there ever a reason to continue using them?

What is the Difference Between Anyone and Any one?

In this post, I will compare anyone vs. any one. I will discuss the differences between these spellings before providing example sentences for each.

I will also show you a memory tool that will give you an easy way to remember whether to use any one or anyone.

When to Use Anyone

What does anyone mean? Anyone is an indefinite pronoun that refers to an unspecified person. If you need a person to do something, but it doesn’t really matter which person it is, anyone is the word to use.

Anyone is a synonym of its fellow pronoun anybody. Here are a few examples of its use in real sentences:

• “Has anyone seen a black car with tinted windows and a vanity plate?” asked the detective.
• Anyone can kill a monarch, but it takes a true leader to control a nation afterward.
• But anyone who inspires Sen. Elizabeth Warren to demand her demotion is doing something right. –The Wall Street Journal

When to Use Any One

What does any one mean? Any one is not the same as anyone, and the two spellings cannot be used interchangeably. Any one means any single person or thing. Any one emphasizes singularity.

For example,

• I cannot think of any one bad idea that you have presented today.
• The basketball star quickly proved that he could overpower any one defender, so opponents began double-teaming him.
• My grandfather held out several pieces of candy and told me I could have any one I wanted.

Any one occasionally appears as a pronoun, but this is relatively uncommon and should be avoided. These two spellings have developed their own usage cases.

As you can see from the chart below, which graphs any one vs. anyone over time, the two-word any one used to be more popular than anyone, but about halfway through the 20th century, writers began to prefer the new compound.

I have isolated the use of these variants as pronouns by graphing anyone can see and any one can see. The chart is still not scientific, as it only looks at books published in English since 1800. Still, it allows us to view a clear, long-term trend in favor of anyone.

Trick to Remember the Difference

These words contain all the same letter, but they are not interchangeable.

• If you are using the word as a pronoun to refer to people, use anyone.
• Any one is written as two words and emphasized singularity. It is not used as a pronoun.

Since anyone rhymes with Tennyson, the last name of famous poet, and both are three-syllable single words, remember to use anyone when referring to people.

Also, the difference between these two words is similar to the difference between everyday and every day, everyone and every one, etc.

Summary

Is it anyone or any one? These two spellings are never interchangeable.

• Anyone is a pronoun referring to an unspecified person.
• Any one is a noun phrase that was once used as a pronoun.

Today, most writers reserve anyone exclusively for the pronoun sense.