‘Did they’ can be used as the question tag for which of the sentences given below?
(A) None of the buses ran on time during the strike, ________?
(B) The children didn’t touch their vegetables at lunch, ________?
(C) The guests left before the cake was cut, ________?
(D) My grandparents never missed the Sunday market, ________?
(E) The masons hadn’t finished the wall by evening, ________?
Choose the correct answer from the options given below:
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 4
The correct answer is Option (4) → (A), (B) and (D) only
(A) None of the buses ran on time during the strike, did they? — Correct.
- “None” means not one, so the sentence is negative and takes a positive tag.
- “Ran” is in the past with no helping verb, and “none of the buses” becomes “they”.
(B) The children didn’t touch their vegetables at lunch, did they? — Correct.
- “Didn’t” makes the sentence negative, so the tag is positive: “did they”.
(C) The guests left before the cake was cut, did they? — Incorrect.
- “Left” is in the past and the sentence is positive, so the tag must be negative.
- Correct form: The guests left before the cake was cut, didn’t they?
(D) My grandparents never missed the Sunday market, did they? — Correct.
- “Never” makes the sentence negative, so the tag is positive.
- “Missed” is in the past with no helping verb, so the tag uses “did”.
(E) The masons hadn’t finished the wall by evening, did they? — Incorrect.
- The helping verb here is “had”, so the tag repeats it, not “did”.
- Correct form: The masons hadn’t finished the wall by evening, had they?