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.