5 exercises — practise casting doubt on whether something happens with "if at all".
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
Which sentence correctly uses "if at all" right after "rarely" to cast doubt on whether an event happens at all?
"The fallback path is exercised rarely, if at all, in production traffic" correctly places the parenthetical "if at all" directly after "rarely", set off by commas, to question whether the event occurs at all. Option B reorders the words within the phrase. Option C wrongly adds "it". Option D moves "if at all" to an unnatural position before "rarely".
2 / 5
Which sentence correctly uses "if at all" to qualify a claim about how quickly a metric improves?
"Latency improves slowly, if at all, once the cache is warmed" correctly uses the fixed phrase "if at all" to question whether improvement happens at all. Option B wrongly substitutes "it" for "at". Option C wrongly inserts "any". Option D wrongly reorders the words.
3 / 5
Which sentence correctly uses "if at all" at the end of a sentence, following a claim about how a feature is used?
"Most customers use the export feature only once a quarter, if at all" correctly ends the sentence with the unaltered fixed phrase. Option B wrongly adds "it". Option C wrongly reorders the words. Option D wrongly adds "so".
4 / 5
Which sentence correctly distinguishes "if at all" (doubting whether something happens) from "if anything" (suggesting the opposite is truer)?
"...faster than before, if at all noticeably; if anything, most users haven't mentioned a difference" correctly uses "if at all" to doubt whether the speed gain is noticeable, and separately uses "if anything" to introduce the stronger, contrary observation. Options B, C, and D all misapply or garble one or both phrases.
5 / 5
Which sentence correctly uses "if at all" after "seldom" in a formal incident report?
"This code path is triggered seldom, if at all, outside of load-testing environments" correctly places "if at all" right after "seldom", set off by commas. Option B reorders "all" and "at". Option C redundantly repeats "triggered". Option D wrongly moves "if at all" before "seldom".