Simple Present: asking questions with do and does

The subject is the person or thing the question concerns. Use do with I, you, we and they; use does with he, she and it. You takes do whether addressing one person or several.

A single person's name or a singular noun phrase takes does: Leo, my friend, this bus. A plural noun or two names joined together takes do. The subject's grammatical form matters: they takes do even when referring to one person. Look at the whole subject rather than the nearest word to the verb.

V1 means the base verb: work, go, study, have. After auxiliary does, do not add -s or -es to the main verb. Does already marks third-person singular. Compare She goes and Does she go?

This also applies when the affirmative form changes its spelling: studies → study, has → have, does → do. Do not add to before the base verb here. When the main verb itself is do, two occurrences of do are not an error: the first is auxiliary and the second lexical.

For a yes/no question, place do/does before the subject, followed by the main verb and the rest of the message. They work here becomes Do they work here?, without moving work before they.

Keep a multiword subject together: does + your English teacher + work. A question mark ends the sentence, but does not itself create the target word order.

For specific information, put a question word or phrase before do/does: where asks for place; when for time; what for an item or information; what time for a clock time; how often for frequency; how much for quantity or price. Keep do/does + subject + base verb after it.

Choose the opening according to what you do not know. Where does she work? asks for a place; When does she work? asks for a time. When what replaces an unknown object, do not retain that object at the end: She drinks tea → What does she drink?

When the unknown information is WHO performs the action, who occupies subject position itself. In an ordinary affirmative question without special emphasis, do not add do/does: Someone lives here → Who lives here? This typical question about an unknown person retains -s.

Who is not always the subject. In Who do you help?, you is already the subject and who asks about another person as object. Here do is necessary. A rule saying 'do never follows who' would also be wrong.

You may later meet emphatic Who DOES live here? or negative Who doesn't live here?. These are different constructions. This lesson practises neutral affirmative questions rather than emphasis or negation.

In ordinary questions with be, move am/is/are before the subject: Are you ready? With modal can, move can: Can she swim? Do not add do or does to these constructions.

A have got question begins with have/has: Have you got a bike? With lexical have without got, the usual modern pattern is Do you have a bike? Both can ask about possession of a bicycle; do not blend them in one sentence.

Short answers to do/does questions are practised separately. The focus here is forming the question; the next speaker can give a full, informative reply.

Do you like pizza? is a reliable full question for finding out a preference. You like pizza? can also be a correct conversational question when checking an assumption or expressing surprise. It uses statement word order as a question; it is not universally ungrammatical.

When an exercise requests a full neutral question with inversion, put do/does before the subject. You like pizza? then misses the specified learning goal even though it is possible in conversation. If the task permits checking or surprise, choose according to the intended meaning.

To form your own question, first decide what you want to find out. Identify the subject, choose do or does, and check the base verb. Separately check whether the construction instead involves be, can, have got or who as the subject.