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, “Anyone can make mistakes, ____”?

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

Answer

Why

Correct — C, (c) can’t they?

This sentence, unlike the one at Q12, is an ordinary statement, so the three statement rules apply together and each of them eliminates something.

The first rule is the auxiliary. A tag repeats the auxiliary verb of the main clause, and where the clause has none it supplies a form of ‘do’. Here the clause is ‘Anyone can make mistakes’, whose auxiliary is ‘can’, so the tag must be built on ‘can’. That alone removes the two options built on ‘is’ and the one built on ‘shall’.

The second rule is polarity. A positive statement takes a negative tag and a negative statement a positive one, the tag serving to invite the hearer’s agreement with what has been asserted. ‘Anyone can make mistakes’ is positive, so the tag must be negative — ‘can’t’, not ‘can’.

The third rule is the subject, which must be a pronoun standing for the subject of the statement. The subject here is ‘anyone’, and the pronoun English uses for the indefinite pronouns — anyone, everyone, someone, somebody, nobody, no one — is ‘they’. This is the long-established singular ‘they’, and in tags it is not merely permitted but required: everyone has arrived, haven’t they? somebody left this file, didn’t they? nobody objected, did they? Notice that the main clause keeps a singular verb while the tag takes the plural pronoun, which looks like a mismatch and is simply how the language works.

Put the three together — auxiliary ‘can’, negative polarity, pronoun ‘they’ — and only one option on the page survives.

Why the others are wrong

(a)isn’t it? — ‘Isn’t it?’ fails on two of the three rules at once: the statement’s auxiliary is ‘can’, not a form of ‘be’, and the subject ‘anyone’ refers to people, so the pronoun cannot be ‘it’. This is the most instructive wrong option in Part A, because ‘isn’t it?’ has become an all-purpose tag in Indian English, attached to sentences of every shape — you are coming, isn’t it? he has finished, isn’t it? The habit is so settled in speech that the tag sounds unremarkable, which is exactly why an examiner puts it on the page. In written English a tag has to be derived from the sentence it follows.
(b)shall they? — ‘Shall they?’ is wrong twice over. ‘Shall’ does not appear in the statement, so there is no auxiliary for it to repeat; and the tag is positive after a positive statement, which reverses the polarity rule instead of applying it. ‘Shall’ in modern English belongs to first-person questions — Shall I begin? Shall we proceed? — and to formal or statutory obligation, and its one tag use is after a sentence opening with ‘Let’s’. None of those is in play here. The pronoun ‘they’ is the only correct thing about this option, and one right element out of three is what makes a distractor look plausible.
(d)is it? — ‘Is it?’ carries the wrong auxiliary, like option (a), and adds the wrong polarity, like option (b): it is positive where the rule requires a negative. It also takes ‘it’ for a subject that stands for people. As a tag it is not meaningless in English — a bare positive tag after a positive statement can express surprise or scepticism, as in ‘He has resigned, has he?’ — but that is a different construction with a different intonation, and it is built on the statement’s own auxiliary even then. Here nothing in the option is derived from the sentence it is supposed to follow.

Concept

A question tag is a short question appended to a statement to invite confirmation, and it is derived mechanically from the statement by three rules.

Copy the auxiliary. Whatever operator the clause uses — be, have, do, or a modal such as can, will, should, must — reappears in the tag. If the clause has no auxiliary, a form of ‘do’ is supplied: she writes well, doesn’t she?

Reverse the polarity. Positive statement, negative tag; negative statement, positive tag. Adverbs that are negative in meaning though positive in form count as negatives for this rule: hardly, scarcely, barely, rarely, seldom, never. So ‘he seldom attends, does he?’

Use a pronoun. The tag’s subject is a pronoun for the subject of the statement, and the indefinite pronouns take ‘they’ — anyone, everyone, someone, nobody, no one, each of which is singular in the clause and plural in the tag. Nouns take the pronoun of their gender and number; ‘there’ is repeated as ‘there’ — there is a problem, isn’t there?

A few tags are irregular and are best memorised whole. ‘I am late, aren’t I?’ uses a form that is not the negative of ‘am’ at all. ‘Let’s go, shall we?’ takes a tag from outside the statement system. And a negative word in the subject, such as ‘nobody’, makes the whole statement negative for polarity purposes even though nothing else in it is negative.

Q13 completes the question-tag pair, and the two items are complementary by design: Q12 tests an imperative, where the tag is chosen for its force, and this one tests a statement, where the tag is derived by rule. A candidate who has understood both knows the whole of what these papers ask about tags.

The printing carries one small oddity recorded from the booklet: the underscore rule that marks the blank wraps to the beginning of the next printed line, so that line begins with the rule and the closing quotation mark. Nothing turns on it, and the item reads as a single quoted sentence with a blank at the end. As everywhere in Part A, the tested slot is marked by a rule or by capitals and nothing is underlined.

The indefinite-pronoun tag is a good example of what the English section is actually testing. Every candidate has heard ‘anyone can make mistakes’ a hundred times; the question is whether he can say what pronoun refers back to ‘anyone’ and what auxiliary the sentence is built on. Those are questions about how a sentence is put together, and they are answered by rule rather than by ear — which is fortunate, because in this particular corner of the language the ear has been trained by a habit that the written standard does not accept.

Key facts

A tag repeats the auxiliary of the statement — here ‘can’ — and supplies a form of ‘do’ only where the statement has no auxiliary of its own.
A positive statement takes a negative tag and a negative statement a positive one, so ‘Anyone can make mistakes’ requires ‘can’t’.
The indefinite pronouns anyone, everyone, someone, somebody, nobody and no one are referred to by ‘they’ in a tag, though the main clause keeps a singular verb.
‘Isn’t it?’ is not a general-purpose tag in written English; it is correct only after a statement whose auxiliary is a form of ‘be’ with the subject ‘it’.
‘Shall’ is used in tags only after a sentence beginning ‘Let’s’, and never with a third-person subject.
Adverbs such as hardly, scarcely, rarely, seldom and never make a statement negative for the purpose of the polarity rule.

Three rules build a statement tag, and each of them removes something

Copy the auxiliary→The tag repeats the operator of the main clause, supplying a form of ‘do’ only where the clause has none. ‘Anyone can make mistakes’ has ‘can’, which removes the two options built on ‘is’ and the one built on ‘shall’.

Reverse the polarity→A positive statement takes a negative tag, the tag inviting the hearer’s agreement with what has been asserted. So the tag must be ‘can’t’, not ‘can’. Hardly, scarcely, barely, rarely, seldom and never count as negatives for this rule.

Use a pronoun→The tag’s subject is a pronoun standing for the subject of the statement, and the indefinite pronouns — anyone, everyone, someone, somebody, nobody, no one — take ‘they’. The main clause keeps a singular verb while the tag takes the plural pronoun.

(a) isn’t it?→Fails two rules at once: the statement’s auxiliary is ‘can’ and not a form of ‘be’, and ‘anyone’ refers to people, so the pronoun cannot be ‘it’. It has become an all-purpose tag in Indian English, which is exactly why it is on the page.

(b) shall they?→‘Shall’ does not appear in the statement, so there is no auxiliary for it to repeat, and the tag is positive after a positive statement. The pronoun is the only correct thing about it.

(d) is it?→Wrong auxiliary and wrong polarity together, with ‘it’ standing for people. A bare positive tag can express surprise or scepticism — ‘He has resigned, has he?’ — but even then it is built on the statement’s own auxiliary.

Study next

The three rules of statement tags and the ‘do’ substitution, worked through the modals: can, will, must, should, ought to, used to.Indefinite pronouns as subjects — singular verb in the clause, plural pronoun in the tag — and the wider use of singular ‘they’.Irregular tags: I am — aren’t I?, Let’s — shall we?, There is — isn’t there?, Nobody came — did they?Semi-negative adverbs and their effect on polarity in tags, in inversion and in short answers.Features of Indian English that a written examination does not accept: the all-purpose ‘isn’t it?’, ‘discuss about’, ‘cousin brother’, ‘revert back’.

Common traps

Reaching for ‘isn’t it?’, which is the default spoken tag in Indian English and is derived from nothing in this sentence.
Forgetting to reverse the polarity and choosing a positive tag after a positive statement.
Treating ‘anyone’ as requiring a singular pronoun in the tag because it takes a singular verb in the clause; the tag pronoun is ‘they’.
Copying a modal that is not in the sentence. ‘Shall’ appears nowhere in the statement and cannot appear in its tag.

Tag items on these papers are set as a pair covering both systems, and the wrong options are built by breaking one rule at a time — one option with the wrong auxiliary, one with the wrong polarity, one with the wrong pronoun. That makes them answerable by elimination even when the sentence is unfamiliar: derive the three elements from the statement first, then read the options. Expect ‘isn’t it?’ to appear in at least one set, and expect an indefinite pronoun or a ‘Let’s’ sentence to be the item that separates prepared candidates from the rest.

Related PYQs

EPFO_EOAO_2017_Q12Open & attempt →

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(c) won’t you?

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
Which one of the following is the appropriate question tag in the sentence, “Everybody has signed the attendance register, ____”?
- (a)hasn’t he?
- (b)haven’t they?
- (c)isn’t it?
- (d)has he?
Answer(b) haven’t they? — the auxiliary is ‘has’, so the tag is built on ‘have’; the statement is positive, so the tag is negative; and ‘everybody’ is referred to by ‘they’, even though the clause itself keeps the singular verb.
practice — not a real PYQ
Which one of the following is the appropriate question tag in the sentence, “Nobody objected to the proposal, ____”?
- (a)did they?
- (b)didn’t they?
- (c)were they?
- (d)isn’t it?
Answer(a) did they? — ‘nobody’ makes the statement negative, so the tag is positive; the clause has no auxiliary of its own, so ‘do’ is supplied in the past to match ‘objected’; and the pronoun for ‘nobody’ is ‘they’.

Why