'All my life could be described as a chain of failures'. Is this sentence grammatically correct? [closed]
I'm a non-native speaker of English. Perhaps my question would seem a little bit silly.
- All my life could be described as a chain of failures.
- It seems to me that all my life is a disaster.
- All my life has been dedicated to helping people.
I'd like to know if the use of 'all' is grammatically correct in my sentences. Some people say that it is redundant in examples like those above, and it's better to change the phrase to 'the whole of my life' or to 'my life is/was/etc.' But I distinctly remember that I have seen many phrases with similar usage of the quantifier. 'All my life' acts here as a grammatical subject, not an adverbial (Compare with: All his life Tom has worked with enthusiasm) - my life at every turn and stage has been dedicated to helping people.
It would be great if somebody could help me with this structure.
Solution 1:
It feels awkward. This is because people often start a sentence "All my life ..." to refer to a period of time for which a subsequent statement is true (contracted from "For all of my life"), as in "All my life, I've been poor."
In your "Tom" example, "All his life Tom has worked with enthusiasm", the sentence is using Tom's "life" to refer to a period (during which he has done something), rather than as a thing that is to be discussed in its own right.
The reader feels confused in your example, because the start of the sentence turns out to mean something that they didn't anticipate.
It's best to avoid this initial confusion and use something else, such as, "My whole life has been ..."