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My spelling tool suggests that I should fix "All of the" to "All the" in the following statements:

  1. If we take all of the above notes into account...
  2. All of the methods described above shorten your path to...
  3. Next step will be just to execute all of the statements above...
  4. ...but there is no single answer to all of them.

What would be the correct variant?

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1 Answer 1

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In your first three sentences all the and all of the are interchangeable. Both all and all of can be used if they are followed by a determiner such as the, my, this.

If there is no determiner, then all of is generally not possible:

All of problems have been solved.

Conversely, it has to be all of in front of a personal pronoun. So your sentence 4 is correct as it stands but is not possible as:

... but there is no single answer to all them.

Similarly, we can't say:

All we are coming.

It has to be:

All of us are coming.

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  • If we say "all we like sheep have gone astray" then we have in fact gone astray (back to the 17th century). Commented Jul 18, 2013 at 3:20

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