"if at all" usage

Hi, EnglishLearner. "if at all" often means "if there is a chance". I will give you some examples:

He labours hard over his proofs of the book, though little, if at all, over the newspaper proofs. (I doubt he labours a liitle ovet the newspapers proofs.)

Jane takes liitle exercise, if at all does it.

If he spokes at all it was in monosyllables.

if at all is not used in isolation. The expression refers back to some other concept and is a highly abbreviated form of that preceding idea.

It occurs after expressions of scarcity, smallness, and the like -- words like little, few, slow, barely, hardly. And it reduces that small amount of something to zero.

More women are having fewer children, if at all.

before usage of phrase 'if at all' please grasp the meaning which is as follows :

if at all = if in any way, if to any extent. e.g.
1)the clause of interest in a contract - there shall be no interest on payment due and if at all the interest shall not be more then 9% p.a.
2) I will not sale the house and if at all, i will sale it to a stranger.

Thank you, Jim.
P.S. I made so many typos and there is a small chance to amend them, if at all.

Hi CJ,
I saw a few examples in BNC. It seems that "if at all" tends to go with the word "possible". Am I correct?

EUW 796 Also very important, if at all possible, is to have some idea of a teacher's normal mode of operation.

melisngIt seems that "if at all" tends to go with the word "possible". Am I correct?

Yes. "if at all possible" is one expression. "if at all" is another.

CJ

Hi CJ,
Could you please tell me the difference between " if at all possible" and "if at all"?
quite confused. ><

Have you read the answer above?

if at all possible means if it is possible in any way whatsoever.
if at all means something more like if any and is dependent on the context.

Please contact me by phone tomorrow if at all possible.
The food was good, but he was not feeling well, so he ate very little if at all.

CJ

I've read all the threads above. I think I need to read lots o e.g. to understand it. Sorry.
The food was good, but he was not feeling well, so he ate very little if at all. << Do you mean that IF he is given a chance to eat, he would eat very little?

melisngso he ate very little if at all.

= so he ate very little, or maybe he ate nothing at all. (I don't know for sure. It seemed that he wasn't eating much. Maybe I didn't even notice that he didn't eat anything.)

Said differently,

If he ate anything at all, it must have been very little.

CJ