SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 9 September 2024, Shift 2 · English Comprehension · Question 16 of 100

Text as printed on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; answer per SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 5 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. The questions and options here are reproduced as printed on a candidate's own response sheet for this shift — the Commission's text, unchanged. Each answer is SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet; SSC allowed challenges to it and never publishes a final key. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

Parts of the following sentence have been given as options. Select the option that contains an error. Every students in the hostel decided to travel to Delhi to witness the Republic Day parade.

(a)Republic Day Parade.
(b)to witness the
(c)Every students in the hostel
(d)decided to travel to Delhi

Answer

Why

Correct — C. 'Every' is a distributive determiner and always takes a singular countable noun: every student, every book, every day.

The paper writes 'Every students in the hostel' — singular determiner, plural noun. That mismatch is the error, and it sits in segment (c).

Corrected: 'Every student in the hostel decided to travel to Delhi.' The verb 'decided' is not at fault, because a past-tense verb shows no number and so hides the mismatch.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Republic Day Parade. — 'Republic Day Parade.' is grammatically sound — a named event followed by the full stop. Its capital P differs from the sentence body, but capitalisation is not what an error-spotting item tests.
(b)
to witness the — 'to witness the' is a correct infinitive of purpose with its article, attaching to 'travel to Delhi'. There is nothing in the segment that could disagree in number or tense.
(d)
decided to travel to Delhi — 'decided to travel to Delhi' is correct throughout: past-tense verb, 'decide' properly followed by an infinitive, 'travel to' before a place name. The agreement fault lies in the subject, not in the predicate.

Concept

Error-spotting items split one sentence into four labelled segments and ask which segment breaks a rule — not which could be phrased better.

The rule here is determiner–noun agreement. 'Every' and 'each' are singular distributives: they pick out one member of a group at a time, so the noun stays singular even though the group is plural.

'All', 'both', 'many' and 'several' take plural nouns.

The fast check is to read the segment on its own: 'Every students' fails with no help from the rest of the sentence.

Because the verb is in the simple past, the mismatch never reaches it — only the noun exposes the error.

That is why the segment holding the subject and its determiner is the one to read first.

Key facts

'Every' and 'each' take a singular noun and a singular verb: every student was present.
The plural idea is carried by 'every one of the students' — the noun straight after 'every' still stays singular.
'All', 'both', 'several' and 'many' take plural nouns: all students, many students.

Study next

Determiner–noun agreement: each, every, either, neither against all, both, fewSubject–verb agreement after 'each of', 'every one of' and 'none of'Infinitives of purpose: travelled to Delhi to witness the parade

Common traps

Hunting for a spelling or capitalisation slip — 'Parade' against 'parade' is not the error.
Expecting the verb to be wrong whenever agreement is tested — a past-tense verb carries no number marking.

This shift runs the same item type twice. Here the fault is a determiner; at English Q.19 (9 Sep 2024, 12:30) it is an auxiliary — 'I will had graduated from college', where 'will have' is required. Both are found by reading each segment alone.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.