Have or has?
One split, three jobs: have owns things, have builds the present perfect, and have to states obligation. The agreement is the same in all three.
The short answer
Use has with he, she, it and any single person or thing. Use have with I, you, we, they and plurals. In the past both become had, with every subject.
Which one do you need?
| Subject | Present | Past |
|---|---|---|
| I, you, we, they, several things | have | had |
| he, she, it, one thing | has | had |
Practice the choice
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Getting your first question ready.
Side by side
Three sentences for each form, taken from the 366 sentences this drill uses. The answer is highlighted.
have
- Have John and Mary ever traveled to Europe?
- Have you been looking for them since last week?
- Have they been building the bridge since spring?
has
- Has she written the report already?
- Has she been walking her dog every morning?
- Has he been cleaning the house for the past hour?
Three jobs, one agreement rule
- Possession: She has a bike. They have a bike.
- Present perfect: She has gone. They have gone.
- Obligation: She has to go. They have to go.
In all three, has belongs to he, she, it and single things; have to everything else. Whatever the job, the subject decides.
After do, does and did
Once an auxiliary takes the agreement, have goes plain:
- Does he have a ticket? — not does he has
- She doesn’t have time.
- Did they have a choice?
Have got
In British English, possession is often stated with have got, and the split holds:
He’s got a new phone. They’ve got nothing to do.
Careful with the contraction: he’s got is he has got, not he is got. The same ’s stands for both is and has, and only the rest of the sentence tells you which.
Has been and has gone
Both are present perfect, and they are not interchangeable:
- He has gone to Paris. — he is there now
- He has been to Paris. — he went at some point and came back
Had, for every subject
The past has one form, which removes the choice entirely:
I had, she had, they had.
So had is also what you need for the past perfect, with any subject: she had left before I arrived.
Mistakes to avoid
Wrong: She have two brothers. correct: She has two brothers.
She is third person singular, so the form is has.
Wrong: He have finished. correct: He has finished.
In the present perfect the auxiliary agrees with the subject just as the main verb would.
Wrong: Does he has a car? correct: Does he have a car?
Does already carries the agreement, so have goes back to its plain form.
Wrong: Everybody have left. correct: Everybody has left.
Everybody is singular, however many people it covers.