Everyday Is Not Every Day

The common grammatical mistake made by most people is writing ‘every day’ as one word. There is a difference between ‘every day’ and ‘everyday.’ It is easy to confuse one for the other when writing a sentence and mind you this is not interchangeable.

Every day simply means ‘each day.’ In this phrase every is used to describe day. On the other hand, everyday is an adjective that means casual, routine or ordinary. The following are examples on how to use these words in a sentence.

John goes to office every day except Sunday.
John’s everyday breakfast is ham sandwich and coffee.

To make it easier for you to know which one to use, a simple test is to substitute ‘every day’ with ‘each day.’ If the sentence does not sound awkward then it’s correct to use ‘every day.’  Using the examples above, let’s substitute that with ‘each day’ and see what happens.

CORRECT: John goes to office each day except Sunday.
WRONG: John’s each day breakfast is ham sandwich and coffee.

The first sentence sounds right when we use ‘each day’ so that must mean ‘every day’ would be the correct choice.  The second one doesn’t sound right at all.  Using ‘each day’ to describe what John regularly eats for breakfast sounds awkward.  This means that ‘everyday’ is the correct word to use.

As I always say, if the sentence sounds awkward or doesn’t sound natural then there must be something wrong with it grammatically.  Say it aloud many times so you can clearly make out the difference. That is also another trick I use when in doubt.