everyone / every one

Everyone means 'every person, all the people.' Every one means every single thing or person.

(Extracted from The Oxford School A-Z of English)

I thank everyone/every one who came to my birthday party.

I think I should use every one. Am I correct?

Many thanks.

But you would say, I'd like to thank EVERY ONE OF YOU for coming to my party.

Inreresting question Yoong.

I would use everyone when applied to a group of people and every one when applied to a group of inanimate objects.

Every one of the objects in the box was red.

Everyone in the group wore red.

dadpad wrote:

Inreresting question Yoong.

I would use everyone when applied to a group of people and every one when applied to a group of inanimate objects.

Every one of the objects in the box was red.

Everyone in the group wore red.

I agree!

And from Dadpad:

Well I would actually disagree here, if that's what contrex said. I think it is incorrect or at least unusual to write "I thank every one who came to my party". In such cases, I would always use "everyone".

As well, your dictionary was in agreement, so it looks like we have a consensus and Contrex is just being pedantic (definition: narrowly, stodgily, and often ostentatiously learned) and playing with semantics.

Edit: Got my quotes mixed up or something - anyway I meant to include McTag's comments, thereby rendering the consensus. I don't know how to nest or do more than one quote in a post.

I did not say "every one" was used for things only. My example was "Every one of you" - that implies PEOPLE, does it not?

I said I agreed that I would use "everyone" in your sentence to imply all of them in the group, and "every one" in a different sense. YOUR DICTIONARY WAS RIGHT. Enough said! This is getting ridiculous.