Jobbly English: "Everyday" or "every day" tells the importance of a space

We probably have come across “enjoy good coffee everyday”, “brighten your every day life with good food” and those similar promotional slogans telling you some product is good for daily consumption. Sadly, they are easily written wrong. These two slogans exactly come with a wrong decision between everyday and every day.

This is not to say everyday or every day is problematic in itself, but when it comes to using everyday or every day with other words, we have to understand the difference in their grammatical functions (how they work with other words correctly).

Everyday is an adjective

Check out the dictionary and you will see everyday is an adjective, which means a word used to describe nouns. Think about how new, good, happy and other adjectives describe nouns:

• Brighten your everyday life with good food.

• Reading is his everyday habit.

• Reading is his new habit.

• His everyday life is boring.

• His happy life is all about good food.

Every day is a noun phrase

In contrast, you probably can’t find every day on the dictionary. That’s tricky. Every day literally are two words, just as what you can see. Break them down. Every is a determiner (an indicator of something); day is a noun. When used together, they form a noun phrase (a noun with some detail), like each day, this habit and my life, and usually become the subject or object of the sentence:

• I love every day.

• I love this habit.

• I control my life.

• Each day is a gift.

• Every day is a gift.

• My life is beautiful.

Every day is a noun phrase working as an adverbial phrase

Well, it doesn’t end here. Every day can work very differently in the sentence. This happens when you express that you do something at a specific frequency, like every morning, each day, every week:

• Enjoy good coffee every day.

• I have coffee every morning.

• I have coffee each day.

• I do gym every two weeks.

• I watch films every month.

• I travel every year.

Instinct just tells you how to use these every or each word combinations, but why? Let’s look into “I travel every year.” This sentence basically is formed by a subject noun, I, with a main verb, travel. Easy to understand. But why there is the extra noun phrase every year? How does it fit into the sentence grammatically? The reason is in the sentence this noun phrase plays an unusual role, adverbial phrase of frequency (an adverb with some detail about frequency). This means every day works just as an adverb here, used to describe the verb, travel. Think about how carefully, slowly, well and other adverbs describe verbs:

• I drive well.

• I drive carefully.

• I drive slowly.

• I drive every day.

• I drive slowly every day.

• Driving every day is my habit.

• Driving slowly is my habit.

Takeaway

Everyday and every day basically have the same meaning, but they function differently when used with other words. Everyday is an adjective, which describes nouns; every day is a noun phrase, usually to serve as a subject or object in the sentence; this noun phrase can also adjust its role to be an adverbial phrase of frequency, which describes verbs.