1.127 Referring to people and things in a general way: indefinite pronouns

When you want to refer to people or things but you do not know exactly who or what they are, or their identity is not important, you can use an indefinite pronoun. An indefinite pronoun indicates only whether you are talking about people or about things, rather than referring to a specific person or thing.

• I was there for over an hour before anybody came.
• Jack was waiting for something.

Here is a list of indefinite pronouns:

• anybody, anyone, anything, everybody, everyone, everything, nobody, no one nothing, somebody, someone, something

Note that all indefinite pronouns are written as one word except 'no one' which can also be spelled with a hyphen: 'no-one'.