[Grammar] "Everyone's lives"?

[Ivelina]

Hi there!

I'd appreciate some help with the following sentence:

"There are times in everyone's lives when we are confronted with immense stress and difficulties."

I was wondering: 1) if it sounds natural enough and is grammatically correct to use the plural "lives" instead of "life" to suggest a greater degree of inclusiveness, and 2) if "we" is a grammatically correct pronoun to use as a subject of the subordinate clause given the reference back to "everyone's lives".

Many thanks!

 

[teechar]

Hi there!

Hello, and welcome to the forum.

I'd appreciate some help with the following sentence:
"There are times in everyone's lives when we are confronted with immense stress and difficulties."
I was wondering: 1) if it sounds natural enough and is grammatically correct to use the plural "lives" instead of "life" to suggest a greater degree of inclusiveness,

I don't know what you mean by "greater degree of inclusiveness", but "everyone" is singular, so use "life" not "lives"*.

and 2) if "we" is a grammatically correct pronoun to use as a subject of the subordinate clause given the reference back to "everyone's lives".

No. Use "he/she is" or "they are". Note that "they" can work as a singular non-gender-specific reference.
If you want to use "we", then use "our lives" in the first part.

* I said that "life" is correct in your sentence above because a person has one life. Note, however, that the following, for example, is possible:
We need to consider everyone's thoughts on this issue. [One person can have different/several thoughts]

 

[emsr2d2]

I have no issue with "everyone's lives" but I was surprised to see "we", not "they".

 

[jutfrank]

1) Yes. The plural lives is preferable since you're talking about everyone.
2) As post #4 says, it's not quite right to use we with everyone.

To keep the sense of inclusiveness that you want, I'd suggest the following:

There are times in all of our lives when we are confronted with immense stress and difficulties.

 

[teechar]

One more thing.
https://books.google.com/ngrams/gra...eryone 's life;,c0;.t1;,everyone 's lives;,c0