'All of the time', or 'all the time'?

Question

Hi Everyone,I know we can say both of the following phrases:- All of the time    &- All the time.How would you explain this to a class.Is one more accurate than the other?Thanks and Happy Easter...CC

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

Cup cake- All of the time &- All the time.

"all
In British English you can say either all the time or all of the time. Speakers differ in their preference for these construction, each of which is well supported. All of the time is the preferred construction in American English." (Dictionary of English Usage - Collins Gem.)

Happy Easter from Poland.

Cup cake · Answer

Thank you Anon.

and...

O-chin Horsham [sorry, I don't have the Cyrillic alphabet on my keyboard.] Lol.

GPY · Answer

To me they seem interchangeable in meaning. I feel that "All of the time" may have a slightly more informal tone. Even given that the "Ngrams" corpus is books, i.e. likely to be more formal, this result still surprises me:

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=all+the+time%2C+all+of+the+time&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3

Cup cake · Answer

Thanks for the link GPY.
I've learned something new today...lol.

I had no idea that Google has such as application as Ngrams.
This site is amazing!!

CalifJim · Answer

Cup cakeI've learned something new today.

You say that all the time.

I use nothing but "all the time" when I mean "always".

Two hours in line to vote! And they kept us waiting in the rain all of the time.

I use "all of the time" when I mean "during that entire period of time".

They keep us waiting in line all of the time all the time would thus make sense to me, though it leaves much to be desired stylistically.

CJ

Cup cake · Answer

Thanks CJ...

as usual...

'All of the time', or 'all the time'?

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