In section IV of ‘On Referring’ (1950), P.F Strawson warns us of the “long philosophical shadows” cast by the subject-predicate distinction. “The distinctions between particular and universal, between substance and quality,” he says, “are such pseudo-material shadows, cast by the grammar of the conventional sentence in which separable expressions play distinguishable roles.” Although Strawson later offered some qualifications on this claim, I will show how, in his book Individuals (1959), he adheres to its basic spirit. There he holds that just as the fundamental form of thought is not the subject-predicate form, so too the fundamental form of reality is not the particular-universal form.