Question Tags

A tag is built from the sentence itself, in three moves: take the auxiliary, flip its polarity, and put a pronoun subject after it.

1. Positive statement → negative tag, and the reverse. "She is coming, isn't she?" / "She isn't coming, is she?"
2. No auxiliary in the sentence → use do / does / did. "He works hard, doesn't he?" "They came late, didn't they?"
3. Imperatives and "let us". A command takes "will you", an invitation takes "won't you", and "Let's go" takes "shall we".
4. Hidden negatives. never, hardly, scarcely, seldom, rarely, no, nothing, none, few, little make a sentence negative, so the tag turns positive: "He hardly speaks, does he?"

Two special forms are worth memorising: "I am right, aren't I?" and, for everyone/somebody/nobody, the tag pronoun is they: "Everyone has left, haven't they?"

The single most common mistake is the all-purpose tag: "You are coming, isn't it?", "He works here, no?" Marathi ends a sentence with an invariant "ना?" and Hindi with "ना?", so one fixed tag feels sufficient. English rebuilds the tag from the sentence's own auxiliary every single time.

How to spot it: read your tag alone. Its verb must be the same verb as in the main clause, and its subject must be a pronoun — if either fails, the tag is wrong.

Tag = auxiliary + opposite polarity + pronoun · no auxiliary → do/does/did · hardly, never, seldom, no, nothing make it negative → positive tag · Let us → shall we · imperative → will you · I am → aren't I · everyone/nobody → they

Add the tag: "She hardly ever comes late, ____?" → "Hardly" makes the statement negative, so the tag must be positive; there is no auxiliary, and the verb "comes" is third person singular present, so the tag takes "does"; the subject is "she". Answer: "does she?" Sanity check: the finished sentence must not carry two negatives — "doesn't she" would give "hardly" plus "not", which is one negative too many.