Situation

I recently posted a family photo to Facebook with the caption “God bless us, every one.” But I originally had written “everyone.”

Question

I searched online for this expression, attributed to Tiny Tim in Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol,” and noticed most results showed “everyone” as two words, not one. At first I thought it was a quaint Dickensian usage. Then I wondered, what IS the difference?

Lesson

Another Google search yielded many answers, but this was the shortest and, it seemed to me, the clearest:

“Everyone” means “all people.” (Example: Everyone in the audience was laughing.) “Every one” means “each person.” (Example: We wish each and every one of you all the best.) — GingerSoftware.com

I found these elaborations helpful as well:
— Use “everyone” if using “everybody” still fits. Use “every one” if using “each one” still fits. (GrammarBook.com)
— If you can insert the word “single” between “every” and “one,” then use the two-word version. With this rule, the word “of” can comfortably follow “one” (such as “every single one of them” or “every single one of us”). (Grammar-Monster.com)

Two other good sources:
— esl.About.com
— Grammar.About.com

(Note: when typing web addresses, capitalization doesn’t matter. For example, “copybench.com” and “CopyBench.com” point to the same website. But I sometimes use capital letters to make web addresses more readable.)