All

Whenallrefers to a whole class of people or things, we don’t usethe:

Allchildren love stories.(i.e. every child in the world)

Not:All the children love stories.

We don’t usethewith time expressions such asall day,all night,week,all year,all summer:

I spentall daylooking for my car keys.

The party went onall nightand some of the neighbours complained.

We useall ofbefore personal pronouns (us, them), demonstrative pronouns (this, that, these, those) and relative pronouns (whom, which). The personal pronoun is in the object form:

I need to speak toall of youfor a few minutes.

He brought gifts forall of us.

We had to contact the insurance firm and the airline,all of whichtook a lot of time.(all of which =‘contacting the insurance firm and the airline’)

With demonstratives (this, that, these, those) we can sayall oforallwithoutof:

[talking about a pile of kitchen waste]

All (of)thishas to go out into the rubbish bin.

We often useofafterallin definite noun phrases (i.e. beforethe, possessives and demonstratives), but it is not obligatory:

All (of) the workerswere given a pay-rise at the end of the year.

I gaveall (of) my old booksto my sister when she went to university.

What shall we do withall (of) this cardboard?Throw it out?

We useall, notall of, before indefinite plural nouns referring to a whole class of people or things:

All catslove milk.

Not:All of cats love milk.

This book was written forall children, everywhere.

We useall, notall of, beforeuncountable nouns:

All junk foodis bad for you.

Not:All of junk food is bad for you.

I loveall music, not just classical.

Whenallrefers to a personal pronoun which is the object in a clause, we can use pronoun +allorall of+ pronoun. The pronoun is in the object form:

I used to have three pens but I’ve lostthem all.(or …but I’ve lostall of them).

Not: …but I lost all them.

However, in short responses,all ofmust be used:

A:

How many of these boxes are you going to need?

B:

All ofthem.

Not:Them all.

We useall ofwith the object form of the pronoun, even when the pronoun is the subject in the clause:

All of usare hoping for good news.

A long line of people waited to speak to the officer.All of themhad a story to tell.

We can useallalone as a pronoun in formal situations:

Allwere happy with the outcome.(less formal:Everyone was happy with the outcome.)

Allwill be revealed to the public in 25 years’ time, when the cabinet papers are released.(less formal:Everything will be revealed to the public …)

Usually,allas a pronoun is premodified or postmodified:

More than 100 people came to the refugee centre.Almost allhad lost family members or property or both.

All that we had been toldturned out to be untrue.

Whenallrefers to the subject of a clause, it usually comes in the normal mid position for adverbs (between the subject and the main verb, or after the modal verb or first auxiliary verb, or afterbeas a main verb):

The kidsallgo to school on the same bus.

These items couldallhave been bought cheaper on the Internet.

The students areallhere now. We can start.

We can also useallas an adverb meaning ‘completely’ or ‘extremely’, especially in informal styles:

He livedallalone in an old cottage in the woods.

He came backallcovered in mud.

I lost a good friend, andallbecause of my stupidity.

Maggie gotallupset when she found out the house had been sold.(informal)

We can makeallnegative by usingnotin front of it:

Not allthe buses go to the main bus station, so be careful which one you get.

We weren’t allhappy with the result.

We useafter allin two main ways. We use it to mean ‘in spite of what happened before’. With this meaning it usually occurs in end position:

[spoken by someone who was previously not hungry]

I think I might have something to eat nowafter all.

She thought she would fail her driving test but she passedafter all.

After allcan also mean ‘it should be remembered that’:

Why don’t you invite Nadia?After all, you do work with her every day.