Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[fw]

Hello everyone.

The following sentence is from a news story.
（the last paragraph of the story: http://sg.news.yahoo.com/060302/1/3z332.html）

Just over half of respondents agreed that the United States was "more pro-Pakistan than pro-India". Some 28 percent disagreed and 19 percent said they did not know.

I am interested in the phrase "just over half of respondents" at the beginning of the sentence above. M. Swan says in his Practical English Usage (3rd ed., OUP, p. 233) that "we can use half or half of before a noun with a determiner article, possessive or demonstrative)."

Is the phrase "just over half of respondents," without a determiners like the before the "respondents", natural English in spite of what Swan says?

Fw

[pugachevV]

I think that you should say just over half of the respondents to be grammatically correct, but you will often see it left out in newspapers.