percentage - per cent

When you express an amount as a percentage of a whole, you say how many parts the amount would have if the whole had 100 equal parts. You write a percentage as a number followed by per cent or by the symbol %. So, for example, if there are 1200 people living in a village and 300 of them are children, you say that 25 per cent (25%) of the people in the village are children.

What is the percentage of nitrogen in air?

He won 28.3 per cent of the vote.

Poland is 90 per cent Roman Catholic.

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Per cent is sometimes written as one word, especially in American English.

Remember that 90 percent of most food is water.

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You also use percentage to indicate roughly how large or small an amount is as a proportion of a whole. For example, you can say that an amount is `a large percentage' or `a small percentage' of a whole.

It's a tiny percentage of the total income.

...areas with a very high percentage of immigrants.

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When percentage is used like this in front of the plural form of a noun, you use a plural form of a verb after it.

A good percentage of the people were his own age.

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When percentage is used in front of a singular form, you use a singular form of a verb after it.

A high percentage of the pet population has been adopted off the streets.

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