"Alright" is not all right?

Today I emailed a coworker asking if a fellow coworker who had a minor medical scare was “all right”. Then, since this person is a bit of a stickler for proper grammar, I wondered if I used the right term, since “alright” sounded more correct after I thought about it. But I was surprised to find after googling that “alright” is actually not even a real word, though it’s gradually gaining default acceptance due to widespread use.

But it just seems wrong to use “all right” in certain circumstances. For example, asking if one person is all right works in the sense “is every part of the person in working order”, I suppose. But what about a group of people? Writing “are they all right?” Sounds like I’m asking if they’re all correct. I could write “are they all all right?”, but in addition to sounding very clumsy, that’s not how one would say it out loud if you were asking say, about a group of friends who were in a car accident. You’d say, “are they alright?”. Maybe “are they all all right” is actually more correct both verbally and in written form, but it sounds wrong.

So I what do you think: is alright all right? All right all of the time or altogether all wrong? No need to answer all together but I hope you’re all ready to answer already.

And yeah, it’s a slow day.

How do you distinguish between this and “are they all right?” Darn those homophones…

If inclined to inquire as to the relative level of rightness of a group of people, I’d probably say “are they all all right?” or “are they all okay?”

Merriam-Webster’s notes on it
It’s alright with me, although I was brought up being taught that it was incorrect usage.

Doesn’t bother me; it beats “a’ight”.

What is a “real” word? The only useful definition is that it is a word used by good writers - the professional writers in all fields, who communicate for a living. That’s useful because it filters out simple mistakes and agreed-upon errors, like the use of apostrophe’s in plural’s.

By that standard, widespread use doesn’t merely make “alright” a real word, it makes it a proper and accepted word.

So who argues against it? A class of pedants, purists, and prescriptivists. They will look down their noses at anyone using alright instead of all right, even in the most casual and colloquial contexts, like, say, email. Or a message board.

What do you do? Neither side is “right.” Or “correct.” You get to decide which to use based on who you are talking to. Or even whom you are talking to. (“Who” vs. “whom” used to be a powerful argument. Today that argument is over. Language is in a constant state of flux and not even experts draw their lines in the same places.) The ordinary user can’t possibly know the standards and preferences of all readers, which is why the formal “all right” is preferred and why it is taught in high school. It’s safe. Yes, “all all right” in the context you used it is therefore preferred over “all alright.” Alright is never to be used, by this thinking.

The problem is that there are hundreds if not thousands of common words, phrases, and expressions whose meanings or spellings are shifting over time. Asking you to be conscious of the status of each of these is ridiculous. My so-called good writers don’t always bother to make these distinctions, either. That’s why alright is in widespread use.

My rule of thumb is that anything in widespread use is fine for the ordinary writer to use in almost every case. Only for the extremely rare highly formal need - it’s hard to know what that might be - should you pay close attention to every word. I suppose that if you are writing to a known stickler, you might want to take extra care. But if you didn’t know that “all right” is the correct term, and “alright” is the one that bothers people then it’s unlikely that you know the status of every other word your wrote in that email.

It’s a trap. The people who make these distinctions are using them to judge you, and they aren’t impartial judges. You can only be judged to be wrong. Being right is taken for granted. Your only defense is to ask questions or look up any words that you may think might be less than formal. That gives you a big advantage. Your other big advantage is that they are dying off. Alright!

Alwrong. <smh>

Exapno Mapcase, all good points.

I’m not so terribly concerned that I always use proper grammar to avoid possibly offending those mean ol’ grammar pedants and sticklers. But I try to be aware of proper usage, even if it’s to know which grammar rule I’m intentionally breaking.

And I know language isn’t a fixed thing, it’s constantly evolving.

I was just surprised to discover it wasn’t considered a “real” or “proper” word at all. I thought when I googled it I would find that “alright” and “all right” were two separate words with separate meanings. Like “already (previously)” and “all ready (a complete set of something is in a state of readiness)”. Or “altogether (completely)” and “all together (a complete set of something is in close proximity)”. It seems like a case can be made for “alright (in good or satisfactory condition)” and “all right (a complete set of something is correct)”.

IMVHO, ‘alright’ and ‘alot’ are substandard slang and should never be used. Just because some rising tide of semiliterates use them alot, it doesn’t make it alright.

I ran into another one yesterday, in the top front page headline: “Governor Hones in on Budget Changes.” I searched around and it turns out that hones-for-homes has become so commonly used that there are generated etymologies for it. Bad enough in any casual usage. Bad enough in today’s pathetic excuses for journalism. But effin’ awful in a top headline.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve known that “alright” “isn’t really a word.” I’m sure that, as Earl’s link notes, people who use/defend “alright” do so by analogy with other legitimate words such as “already,” “although,” and “altogether.”

Note, however, that the word “already” has a distinctly different meaning from “all ready.” Ditto for “altogether” and “all together,” and for “although” and… well, “all though” doesn’t really mean anything by itself. So if you’re arguing by analogy, “alright” should be a separate word with a different meaning from the phrase “all right.”

Perhaps unfortunately, however, the phrase “all right” already carries the idiomatic meaning that people use “alright” for. I guess if our language made consistent, logical sense, the OP’s reasoning would apply: “all right” would mean “each one right” or “every part right,” leaving “alright” as a rough synonym for “okay.”

Instead, what we have in actual practice is that “all right” and “alright” seem to be used interchangeably, as alternative spellings for the same word, but with “alright” treated as a misspelling by purists.

Not only is “alright” a real word on the grounds of its widespread usage by ordinary folk and professional writers alike, but in many contexts it conveys a meaning distinctly different from that of “all right”. “Alright” means good enough to be going on with, but very often with the implication that things could be a lot better. “All right” normally implies that something is as good as it possibly could be. The expressions are, also, not complete homophones. If you want to use “all right”, meaning perfect, just a slightly stronger stress on the “all”, and a tiny but distinct pause between the words, will make it clear that you are not saying things are merely “alright”.
“How did you do on the test?”
“Alright.” :frowning: (I didn’t fail, at any rate.)

“How did you do on the test?”
“All right.” :):):cool:
It is when different forms convey different meanings that they are worth keeping and worth defending. Even if it is the case (which it may or may not be), that “alright” originally arose via a careless confusion regarding “all right”, it is a good thing for the language to have both “alright” and “all right” available, and it is sensible and proper to resist the one being collapsed into the other, whether via pedantry or carelessness.

“Alot”, by contrast, is nothing but a regrettably common typographical error, which sometimes gets taken for correct, and so imitated, by those who know no better. It marks no difference in meaning or pronunciation from the correct form, “a lot”, which consists of two distinct words, that both continue to function in their usual way when used together. There is no positive value to the acceptance of “alot”, and its spread would deserve to be resisted, even if (as I do not really think is the case) its use were common amongst “professional” (or otherwise careful) writers.

How widely is this distinction known/accepted?

Agreed. Obligatory Hyperbole and a Half link

Round here it is more like - “All roight!” In Birmingham this is the exact equivalent of a French ça va.

I have thankfully never come across ‘alot’ as a word.

FWIW, I just started a text message on my phone, and at alr, it offered alright as a choice. Much like the bags of mail addressed to Santa, that seals it.

I haven’t taken a survey, but it is something I have implicitly understood as long as I can remember, and I have never noticed that other people don’t seem to understand it (although, of course, in conversation “alright” and “all right” sound alike enough to be easily confused). If you are suggesting that you do not, already, implicitly understand the distinction, I am, frankly, rather skeptical.

Indeed, it seems to me that the large majority of times that one hears the expression used (however one may think it should be spelled), it means “satisfactory but not wonderful”, which is rather at odds with the literal, surface meaning of the words “all right”. It is actually a rare circumstance for things to truly be “all right”, but common enough for them to be “alright”, so, I think, the latter is actually by far the commoner expression in everyday talk.

Then double your skepticism, because every word of it is absolutely new to me as well. Now, it’s certainly possible that you’re finding something in British usage that doesn’t exist in American usage. In American usage, however, alright and all right are interchangeable in virtually every sense.

Not every single sense: Your example of “all right” and “alright” connoting shades of difference as an answer to that question would work here as well. But that’s the extremely rare exception.

In fact, the dictionary definition of “all right” does not denote "the best possible.’

That’s what comes up on top when you Google the term. Note that it equates “all right,” “alright” and “allright.” That’s bizarre, and all the more so that if you search on “allright” you get “did you mean ‘alright’?”

A friend was recently in a horrible motorcycle crash. As a result, he had to have his left leg and left arm amputated. He is now all right.

Yes.

[QUOTE=Amateur Barbarian]
I ran into another one yesterday, in the top front page headline: “Governor Hones in on Budget Changes.” I searched around and it turns out that hones-for-homes has become so commonly used that there are generated etymologies for it. Bad enough in any casual usage. Bad enough in today’s pathetic excuses for journalism. But effin’ awful in a top headline.
[/QUOTE]

Heh. I saw a piece the other day that mentioned “homing in upon”. They were so proud of getting homing right, but couldn’t just use the expression as is. It felt like when people think “me” is somehow rude, so they use “myself”. Um, “on” is a perfectly cromulent word.

Many professions/trades have their own style guides that would weigh in on this question. My AP 2011 style guide says “all right” and never use “alright”. My Chicago Style 16th edition says to avoid “alright.” My Redbook (legal style) is silent. I can’t find my Gregg, but I suspect it would be critical of “alright”.

But for writing dialogue or artistic purposes, “alright” might be the only correct usage. It really depends on the situation.

When I’m asked by the supermarket checkout person “How are you today?” I say “Good”. “Well” is the more formal usage, but it’s a bit too hoity toity for everyday speech and seems to me to put on airs.

The point is to be clearly understood. Unless writing a formal paper. In that event, be obstruse just for the sake of it.

You could have left that out. :rolleyes:

Agree with the first para. There’s slang, and then there’s “ungrammatical” slang. Alright and alot fall into this category.

Another one that seems somehow related, at least in category, is *tact *for tack: I think I’ll take a different tact with that one. Ouch.