Enforcement Officer / Accounts Officer (EO/AO) 2017 recruitment test. Transcribed from the Commission's own booklet (series A, GRS-A-TNS); answer as per the official UPSC final answer key. This question is in Part A. Answer last reviewed 24 August 2026.

Which one of the following is the appropriate question tag in the sentence, “Take a seat, ____”?

(a)shall you?
(b)can’t you?
(c)won’t you?
(d)would you?

Answer

Why

Correct — C, (c) won’t you?

The first move is to notice what kind of sentence is being tagged. ‘Take a seat’ is an imperative: it has no expressed subject, its understood subject is ‘you’, and its verb is a bare infinitive. The familiar tag rules that candidates learn — repeat the auxiliary, reverse the polarity, use a pronoun subject — are rules for statements, and a statement is what an imperative is not. There is no auxiliary in ‘Take a seat’ to repeat and no polarity to reverse.

Imperatives take their own small set of tags, and the choice among them is a choice of tone rather than of grammar: will you? won’t you? would you? can you? could you? A command or a request to do something for the speaker takes ‘will you?’ or ‘would you?’ — Post this letter, will you? An invitation, an offer, something pressed on the hearer for the hearer’s own benefit, takes ‘won’t you?’ — Come in, won’t you? Have another cup, won’t you? Sit down, won’t you?

‘Take a seat’ is the standard English formula for offering a chair to a visitor. Nothing is being asked of him; something is being offered to him. That is the invitation case, and ‘won’t you?’ is the tag English attaches to it. The negative form is doing the work of courtesy here — it invites the hearer to say no if he wishes, which is what makes the offer polite rather than peremptory, in the same way as ‘Won’t you sit down?’ asked as a full question.

The blank in the printed sentence is a solid underscore rule inside the quotation marks, and each option is printed with its own question mark, so the tag has only to be dropped into the space as it stands.

Why the others are wrong

(a)shall you? — ‘Shall you?’ is not an English tag. ‘Shall’ survives in modern English in questions of the first person — Shall I close the window? Shall we begin? — and in formal or legal writing where it imposes an obligation, as in the statutory ‘the employer shall pay’. It does not attach to a second-person subject in a tag at all. The one place ‘shall’ does appear as a tag is after a sentence beginning ‘Let us’ or ‘Let’s’: Let’s take up the next file, shall we? That single exception is worth memorising precisely because it is the only one, and it is what makes this option look possible to a candidate who half-remembers it.
(b)can’t you? — ‘Can’t you?’ is grammatically available after an imperative, but its force is wrong. Attached to a command it expresses impatience or rebuke — Be quiet, can’t you? Hurry up, can’t you? — and it implies that the hearer ought already to have done the thing, or is being obtuse in not doing it. Said to a visitor being shown to a chair it would be an insult rather than a courtesy. This option is a reminder that a tag can be well formed and still be the wrong answer, because the item is testing which tag suits the sentence it is attached to.
(d)would you? — The Commission’s key does not take this option, and it is the one that deserves care, because ‘would you?’ is perfectly good English after an imperative. Its use, though, is to soften an instruction that the speaker wants carried out — Close the door, would you? Sign here, would you? — so the hearer is being asked to do something, usually for the speaker’s convenience. ‘Take a seat’ asks nothing of the hearer: it offers him a chair. The distinction the item turns on is between a softened request and an invitation, and the tag that marks an invitation is the negative one.

Concept

Question tags come in two systems, and confusing them is the commonest cause of error.

The system for statements has three rules working together. The tag repeats the auxiliary of the main clause, supplying ‘do’ where there is none — she sings, doesn’t she? The tag reverses the polarity — a positive statement takes a negative tag and a negative statement a positive one. And the tag’s subject is always a pronoun standing for the subject of the main clause. Words that are negative in meaning without being negative in form — hardly, scarcely, barely, rarely, seldom, never — count as negatives for the polarity rule, so ‘he rarely comes on time’ takes ‘does he?’

The system for imperatives is quite different. There is no auxiliary to copy and no polarity to reverse, so the tag is chosen for its force: will you? and would you? for requests and instructions, won’t you? for invitations and pressed offers, can you? and could you? for asking a favour, and can’t you? for impatience. A separate rule covers sentences beginning ‘Let’s’, which take ‘shall we?’, and ‘Let us’ in the sense of ‘allow us’, which takes ‘will you?’

The practical test is to ask who benefits. If the speaker wants something done, the tag is a request tag. If the hearer is being offered something, the tag is ‘won’t you?’

Q12 and Q13 are this paper’s pair of question-tag items, and between them they cover both systems: an imperative here and a statement with an indefinite pronoun at Q13. That is an efficient piece of setting, and it tells a candidate what to prepare — not a list of tags, but the two rule-sets and the boundary between them.

The printing is worth noting. The blank appears inside the quoted sentence as an underscore rule, before the closing quotation mark, and the four options are printed in italic with their question marks attached. Nothing in Part A of this booklet is underlined, and each item states its own task inside its own stem, so ‘the appropriate question tag’ in the stem is the whole of the instruction.

The item is also a good illustration of what these papers mean by English Language. There is no obscure vocabulary and no complicated structure; the question is whether the candidate can tell an invitation from an instruction and knows which tag English attaches to each. That is the same practical competence tested by the phrasal-verb set that follows and by the idiom items that close the section — knowing which fixed form the language actually uses in a given situation, rather than which form could be constructed from the rules.

Key facts

‘Take a seat’ is an imperative with an understood subject ‘you’ and no auxiliary, so the statement tag rules — copy the auxiliary, reverse the polarity, use a pronoun — do not apply to it.
Imperative tags are chosen for force: will you? and would you? for requests and instructions, won’t you? for invitations and offers, can you? or could you? for a favour, can’t you? for impatience.
‘Won’t you?’ marks an invitation and leaves the hearer free to decline, which is what makes the offer courteous: Come in, won’t you?
‘Shall’ never tags a second-person imperative; its only tag use is after ‘Let’s’, as in ‘Let’s begin, shall we?’
‘Can’t you?’ after an imperative carries impatience or rebuke and would be discourteous in an offer of a chair.
The blank is printed as a solid underscore rule inside the quoted sentence, and each option carries its own question mark.

An imperative takes its tag for force, not by the statement rules

Why the familiar rules do not apply→‘Take a seat’ is an imperative: no expressed subject, an understood ‘you’, a bare infinitive. Copy the auxiliary, reverse the polarity, use a pronoun — those are rules for statements, and here there is no auxiliary and no polarity.

(c) won’t you? — an invitation→‘Take a seat’ is the standard English formula for offering a chair to a visitor: nothing is asked of him, something is offered to him. The negative form does the work of courtesy, leaving him free to decline — Come in, won’t you?

(d) would you? — a softened request→Perfectly good English after an imperative, but it softens an instruction the speaker wants carried out: Close the door, would you? Sign here, would you? The hearer is being asked to do something, usually for the speaker.

(b) can’t you? — impatience→Well formed and wrong in force. Attached to a command it rebukes — Be quiet, can’t you? Hurry up, can’t you? — implying the hearer is being obtuse. Said to a visitor being shown to a chair it would be an insult.

(a) shall you? — not a tag at all→‘Shall’ never attaches to a second-person subject in a tag. Its one tag use is after ‘Let’s’ — Let’s take up the next file, shall we? — and that single exception is what makes the option look possible.

The practical test→Ask who benefits. If the speaker wants something done, the tag is a request tag; if the hearer is being offered something, the tag is ‘won’t you?’

Study next

Tag questions after statements: the three rules of auxiliary, polarity and pronoun, and the ‘do’ substitution where there is no auxiliary.Semi-negative adverbs — hardly, scarcely, barely, rarely, seldom, never — and their effect on the polarity of a tag.Tags after imperatives and after ‘Let’s’, and the different forces of will you, won’t you, would you, can you and can’t you.Irregular tags worth memorising: I am — aren’t I?, Let’s — shall we?, There is — isn’t there?, Nobody came — did they?Polite formulas in English and the grammar that carries the politeness: negative questions, past-tense modals, and tags that invite refusal.

Common traps

Applying the statement rules to an imperative and hunting for an auxiliary to copy; ‘Take a seat’ has none.
Choosing a tag that is grammatical but wrong in force. ‘Can’t you?’ can follow an imperative and would turn a courtesy into a rebuke.
Half-remembering the ‘Let’s … shall we?’ rule and extending ‘shall’ to a second-person tag, where English never uses it.
Missing the difference between a request, where the speaker wants something done, and an invitation, where the hearer is being offered something.

Question tags appear on these papers as a pair of items rather than singly, and the pair is usually built to cover the two systems — one imperative and one statement, or one statement and one sentence with an indefinite pronoun. The wrong options are of three kinds: a tag with the wrong auxiliary, a tag with the wrong polarity, and a tag that is well formed but carries the wrong force. Expect ‘isn’t it?’ to appear somewhere in the set, since it is the tag most often used indiscriminately in Indian English.

Related PYQs

EPFO_EOAO_2017_Q13Open & attempt →

Which one of the following is the appropriate question tag in the sentence, “Anyone can make mistakes, ____”?

(a) isn’t it?
(b) shall they?
(c) can’t they?
(d) is it?

Answer(c) can’t they?

The other question-tag item of the pair, which tests the statement system — the auxiliary, the polarity and the pronoun for an indefinite subject.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
Which one of the following is the appropriate question tag in the sentence, “Let’s take up the next file after lunch, ____”?
- (a)shall we?
- (b)will we?
- (c)don’t we?
- (d)shan’t we?
Answer(a) shall we? — a sentence beginning ‘Let’s’ takes ‘shall we?’, and this is the only place a second-person tag uses ‘shall’ at all. The other three apply statement rules to a sentence that is not a statement.
practice — not a real PYQ
Which one of the following is the appropriate question tag in the sentence, “He rarely comes on time, ____”?
- (a)doesn’t he?
- (b)does he?
- (c)isn’t it?
- (d)is he?
Answer(b) does he? — ‘rarely’ is negative in meaning though positive in form, so the statement counts as a negative one and takes a positive tag. The auxiliary must be ‘do’, which rules out both ‘is’ options, and ‘isn’t it?’ ignores the pronoun rule as well.

Why