Rules For Using Question Tags In English (don't You?, Isn't It? …)

When it comes to the form of question tags, you need to pay attention that a personal pronoun (‘he, she, it, we’, etc.) instead of a noun is used in almost every case. It has to refer to the subject of the sentence which is often a noun or the same personal pronoun. Similarly, the tense in the question tag cannot differ from the tense in the statement. The following points demonstrate the forming in detail:

1. If an auxiliary verb (‘be, have, do’, etc.) or a modal verb (‘must, can, would’, etc.) appears in the statement, it has to be used in the tag question too. The main verb is not mentioned anymore:
   • “The house you bought was built in 2003, wasn’t it?”
     • The personal pronoun ‘it’ in the tag refers to the subject ‘the house’ of the corresponding sentence.
   • “We have got a beautiful garden, haven’t we?”
     • Here the personal pronoun ‘we’ is used in the tag question as well as in the subject.
   • “The instructions must be followed, mustn’t they?”
     • Be careful: ‘must not’ has a special meaning and is not usually the negative version of ‘must’. Compare the difference in the use of ‘must & mustn’t’.
2. If there is only a main verb present in the statement and no auxiliary verb, the question tag is formed with ‘do’ (the tense has to be the same):
   • “Ingrid likes to do a lot of sports, doesn’t she?”
     • present simple
   • “We spent too much money yesterday, didn’t we?”
     • past simple
3. If the statement is a request, ‘will’ or ‘would’ are usually employed:
   • “Pass me the sugar, would you?”
   • “Don’t be late, will you?”
4. If the request includes ‘let’s’, ‘shall’ is the suitable question tag:
   • “Let’s go shopping, shall we?”
5. Whenever ‘there is, there are, there were’ for showing that something exists is used, ‘there’ needs to be applied in the question tag too:
   • “There weren’t a lot of things left at the sale, were there?”
6. Attention: If the statement includes the personal pronoun for the first person, the question tag is formed with “… aren’t I?”. In fact, this is against the general grammar rules as it actually needs to be “… am I not?”. However, in this form, that means not shortened, it is only used when something needs to be emphasized in particular. Therefore, the following version is more common:
   • “I’m very lazy, aren’t I?”