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I notice that people will use "of a"/"of an" when describing a quality of something, rather than "a"/"an" alone. I would only add the "of" in a quantifier. In my personal experience, it's more prevalent amongst American English speakers, which is supported by Ngram Viewer: British English and American English. It appears not to be dominant in either dialect.

Some examples:

It's not that big of a deal.

vs.

It's not that big a deal.

and

He's not that good of an athlete.

vs.

He's not that good an athlete.

I see it as bad grammar but am I wrong? In a quantifier it feels natural, e.g.:

They didn't provide much of a meal.

People keep suggesting this Q & A as a duplicate but, as per my comment below, they are asking why there is a difference. I have already established that the difference is between qualitative and quantitative. Thanks for the downvotes, though.

Walf
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  • Thanks, @livresque. I searched but didn't see that one. It's close; they're asking why it applies to some and not others, but I already know it's quantifying vs. qualifying. My question is asking whether using "of" in a qualifier is incorrect, and why (not). – Walf Feb 18 '22 at 03:37
  • The Dictionary.com quote gives caveats regarding acceptability. – Edwin Ashworth Feb 20 '22 at 14:48

2 Answers2

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In American English, the of is perfectly natural.

In fact, I always sort of assumed that It’s not that bigga deal was a speech elision for It’s not that big of a deal — one that would perhaps be corrected to of a in formal writing.

It seems I had that exactly backwards. Grammarphobia says:

. . . these dialectal “of a” usages are becoming acceptable idioms in casual speech and informal writing. However, we still wouldn’t recommend them in formal English, written or spoken.
Source: Grammarphobia — Not that big of a deal?

However, Grammarphobia does add:

It would be an understatement to call this idiom common in American speech. One linguist has written that for lots of speakers, it’s more than common—it’s preferred.

Here are some results from the Corpus of Contemporary American English:

that big of a deal (439)

that big a deal (462)

You can find comparable results there for:

that ADJ of a NOUN (1,074 / unique 444)

that ADJ a NOUN (1,322 / unique 630)

The Grammarphobia article was written eight years ago. In that time that adj of a noun has no doubt embedded itself deeper in the language.

See this Google Ngram for:

that big of a deal,that big a deal (American English 1970–2019)

As an American editor, I imagine I would let stand of a if encountered, and possibly even “correct” a to of a.

Tinfoil Hat
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  • Thanks for a detailed response, though I think "deal" is a poor noun choice as it's fairly casual. A better example would be that from the question others linked: "how big a problem" vs "how big of a problem", in American English and British. – Walf Feb 20 '22 at 23:46
  • @Walf: that big of a problem is more common than that big a problem in both COCA and Google Ngram American English. – Tinfoil Hat Feb 20 '22 at 23:54
  • We aren't looking at the same graphs. In Ngrams, I omitted "that" in the links to broaden the search, and the "of a" variant doesn't even appear until 1946. Adding "that" shows the "of a" variant only became dominant in 2010. – Walf Feb 21 '22 at 01:00
  • @Walf: Can you link to the Ngrams you are using? – Tinfoil Hat Feb 21 '22 at 01:24
  • The links are in my first comment. Adding "that" led to this graph that shows the 2010 shift. – Walf Feb 21 '22 at 05:04
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Although adding an "of" is common in spoken English (at least in the U.S.), it is not considered proper grammar.

Daniel Asimov
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