0

Is this phrase grammatically correct: “I love all of her album”. I’m referring to an artist who’s only come out with one album and want to say that I like all the songs in the album. But the phrase “all of the” seemed to be used with plurals, such as “I love all of her albums” or “I love all of her songs”. Is it grammatically correct to use “all of the” with a singular collective noun? It seems as if “I lover her whole album” is more grammatically correct than “I love all of her album”

Improve this question
1
  • 1
    If you say "I love all of her album" you will probably get a laugh, because drawing attention to a lack in such a way is usually interpreted as sarcasm (Cf. "I'm going to do a little medley of my hit"). The other interpretation would be that you are, intentionally or otherwise, doing an impression of Forrest Gump—also likely to produce laughter.
    – Robusto
    Commented Feb 13, 2019 at 15:32

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
2

All of the ______, as an expression, works with plural count nouns and noncount nouns. Here's an example of each:

I read all of her books. (Books is plural.)

I read all of her research. (Research is noncount.)

If you want to represent something covering the entirety of a singular noun, the whole _____ is a common construction:

I read the whole book. (Book is singular.)

I love her whole collection. (Collection is singular.)

That said, you can use either all or whole when it's a single count noun that can be split into parts, as with a collective noun. From Cambridge:

I ate the whole breakfast (breakfast treated as a singular noun)

I ate all of the breakfast (breakfast treated as a collective noun, i.e., the toast, eggs, bacon, and so on)

So you can either say:

I love the whole album (album as a singular noun)

I love all of the album (album as a collective noun, i.e., a collection of songs)

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .