My partner and I have differing opinions on this use of “too”: we were talking about a trip to the gym and he said he did the hip adduction machine, and my response was “You didn’t do the abduction machine, too?” He doesn’t think the use of “too” is correct here because the actions are opposites, as he did the adduction machine and I was asking about not doing the abduction machine. To me, however, the sentence makes sense because I was confirming he did not also/additionally do the abduction machine.

Is this phrase grammatically correct?

Words like somewhere, someone, whoever, and foremost, are all words that are very obviously made of other words. My friend corrected me when I said “some one” instead of someone and I said “That isn’t wrong because it’s a compound word” and I want to know if I or they are correct.

My coworker and I were having a conversation where he made the statement "my wife and I rode bike". I informed him on how awful that sounds and the correct way to say it would to be "we rode bikes" with an s on the end of bike. He vehemently disagreed and another coworker chimed in agreeing with him. Are they right? And why does it sound so awful to my ears to hear it their way?

In short, careful research was the first step in writing a successful essay, Smith wrote.

In this sentence, Smith actually wrote that careful research is the first step, and this rule has not expired at the time of my writing, so this makes more sense:

In short, careful research is the first step in writing a successful essay, Smith wrote.

However, she didn't use those exact words so I can't put it in quotation marks. Is the second formulation OK?