Upvoted and agreed, not least because I just learned that “all of the sudden,” while at present a nonstandard variant of “all of a sudden,” has valid history.
And of course it doesn’t matter in this casual context!
But in formal writing, in this era, using “a” will avoid distracting the reader from your main point.
“of the sudden” (1570) actually predates “of a sudden” (Shakespeare) according to my OED as squinted at through the nifty magnifying glass. But it’s been considered obsolete for a long time despite having all of a sudden experienced a resurgence.
(Note, I modernized the spellings of “sudden” rather than try to switch focus back and forth)
Upvoted and agreed, not least because I just learned that “all of the sudden,” while at present a nonstandard variant of “all of a sudden,” has valid history.
And of course it doesn’t matter in this casual context!
But in formal writing, in this era, using “a” will avoid distracting the reader from your main point.
“All of the sudden” is only valid because it’s so commonly (incorrectly) used. Much as it annoys me, that’s just how language works.
“of the sudden” (1570) actually predates “of a sudden” (Shakespeare) according to my OED as squinted at through the nifty magnifying glass. But it’s been considered obsolete for a long time despite having all of a sudden experienced a resurgence.
(Note, I modernized the spellings of “sudden” rather than try to switch focus back and forth)
Can’t we just embrace adverbification and agree to write “suddenly”?
People aren’t saying it because they’re language scholars, it’s because they misheard the proper modern usage. So it goes for many language shifts.