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I've long noticed people use all of the above in conversations, to refer to things just mentioned by the opposite speaker. Somehow it never stops sounding weird to me- it seems the person pressumes that you must, like them, apply some kind of simplistic spacial orientation to thoughts, or impulsively copy thoughts to mental prints.
Is it always a common expression, or a modern habit? More of the bookish? Does it sound normal to you?
No doubt the expression comes from the multiple choice tests we all took in school, where often the last choice was "all of the above" or "none of the above" (which I've also heard in conversation). But take a look at this Ngram. The first rise in usage seems to occur around the time public education came into vogue. Makes sense to me. But the rapid rise after about 1970 is a real puzzle.
Of course, as you point out, in spoken English it sounds a bit odd. Could be more correctly said as "all of the preceding" or "all of the aforementioned" but "all of the above" is simpler to say, and everyone knows exactly what is meant. The Ngram supports this. Sure, there's no real spatial orientation (as in a written multiple choice question) but that doesn't bother me. The usage is so common it has essentially become a synonymous phrase, perhaps even a full-blown idiom.
Now grammatically, "all the above/preceding/aforementioned" may be slightly more correct, since the "of" isn't really needed. Curiously, the Ngram for those phrases looks like this and doesn't show any correlation with the rise of public education. But almost every multiple choice question I've seen uses the "of" so that supports my original contention.
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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