Discussion Groups / English Usage / July 2009

In the recent thread about towel(l)ing, Peter Duncanson quoted a
passage from /The Times/:

"Children under 14 are being hit hardest and the NHS was told to
plan for a worst-case scenario of up to half of all children being
infected during a first pandemic wave."[1]

This is unremarkable, if we assume that 'children under 14' is a
subset of 'all children.' But I hear time and time again 'half of
all' or 'n percent of all' et sim. where no such comparison exists.
If I google "percent of all", I get a staggering number of hits.
Scanning the first page, I reckon that "all" is redundant in most of
them. A few examples from this and similar searches:

* 75 percent of all phishing emails target PayPal or eBay users
* 22 percent of all traffic accidents in the United States are
caused by drivers running red lights.
* More than half of all deaths of people of working age in Russia
are caused by alcohol
* Half of all British servicemen say they want to quit
* One third of all oceanic shark species at risk of extinction
* A quarter of all the largest public-sector database projects,
including the ID cards register, are fundamentally flawed
* half of all men and three-quarters of all women who have chlamydia
have no symptoms

There are many cases where the "all" is required, and others where
it might help, but I can't help getting annoyed at (particularly)
journalists who routinely stick one in where it's not needed. Any
statisticians out there?