Wilkie Collins uses "all on a sudden" in The Woman in White. Check it out on Google. Use Google and search "books" using the term "all on a sudden". Google will correct your search to "all of a sudden", but click on the tab that says, "search instead for all on a sudden" and you'll get it.

I've seen this elsewhere, but I can't remember exactly where.

People take grammar too seriously. I've heard the following comments from want-to-be experts recently: "and" should never be used after a colon; "but" is a word that should never follow a semicolon; and finally, any conjunction following a semicolon, with the caveat that I am speaking only of English conjunctions, will not be understood as well as a conjunction following a comma. Period.

tmesis is correct. it is a type of pleonasm.

how about abandoning the accent thing and spell it with English phonetics--rayzoomay, or perhaps, rezoomay

It's actually spelled "egg".

I can't believe that no one has mentioned the fact that the subjunctive is only a mood. It is a matter of whether one would like to sound sophisticated or not. If you want to sound classy, you say "if I were", but if you want to sound artless, you say "if I was". It's as simple as that! It's like choosing between the words "career" and "vocation".

AnWulf, one of the model questions you use is the following: "What is the distance between two points in inches?" Margaret's dilemma may be solved by giving one of the following responses: 1) "The distance is eight inches" or 2) "The distance are eight inches."

If "distance" is conceived, like "team", as a collective composed of discrete units, then it takes a 3rd person plural verb, and we should use #2 (cf. "The team are taking the field"). If on the other hand, distance is treated like "team", as it is used in the US, taking a singular verb, then we should use #1 (cf. "The team is taking the field").

If you want to be sensitive to the PC police among us who believe that someone is offended every time a person uses "American" to refer to a resident of the US, then by all means, please, say "United States of American". You should also stop referring to the English as British--after all, there are other British people who also call themselves British.

Yes, the context is extremely important. It's the same thing with the word "team". When you are talking about the individual players, you say, "The team are each putting on their cleats". When you are talking about the singular entity, you say, "That team is winning the game".

That's true, it is Irish. I looked it up on a site this morning that said it was Irish. Thanks for the vivid dialogue, Adam.