Hi there I am not a native speaker , but the difference is , ,,people is the plural form of ,,person,, In your example , it should be , how many people went to the restaurant? And , about the ,,persons,, i guess it is used in political contexts and it is formal In a sentence, you could say : All persons of This country are considered citizens. Hope this helps If you still are not sure , wait a little bit And someone who knows better will say smth in response to your question. Good day :)

Hi, "People" is the word that we generally use as the plural of "person". But in formal situations "persons" is used to talk about those who are not known or not named: See the example. ✔️All 115 persons on board were killed.

According to the gramarly site, when I goggled this There was a time in history when it was put forward that grammatically, persons should be the preferred plural any time more than one person was referred to as a countable noun, and people should be preferred for uncountable nouns. That practice did not become standard, and nowadays, the plural persons is only considered correct in legal contexts and, occasionally, when deliberately referring to humans individually rather than collectively. As a native speaker, this is also my experience that "persons" is not a word sensibly used except in strange semi-legal talk, suck as capacity of elevators or similar.