It’s not Alright

If I were given a dime for every time I’ve heard “but, language is flexible; it changes,” then I should have just a few extra dollars, for my friends, thank God, are not literature undergraduates. The damage that this now worthless phrase has inflicted upon my heart, however, must have already cost me a fortune.

Why is it not alright?

It’s not alright because it’s not all right; it has nothing to do with being stuffed to the nipples with methane. Whenever one embarks upon alright, one is truly searching for all right.

All right means that everything’s “all right,” as in it’s not at all left, as in it’s not at all evil, as in it’s all good. 

Whenever something’s all right, all acts as an adverb, describing the adjective (or nominative adjective) right, which, in this case, is intensifying the rightness. 

To wantonly use alright is not the sign of an understanding soul more accepting of newcomers, rather of poor discriminatory abilities. Surely, homophones can be a nuisance in English, but the fact that we cannot persuade that same homophone-sufferer that listening to audiobooks is not the same as reading should not be our problem to bear. 

Those at fault, however, are somewhat intelligently attempting to truncate the word into a word-pattern similar to those they’ve before seen. Perhaps top form here would be to provide a comparative list of distinctions, and, through this, describe what all right offenders believe to be doing. 

All ready: All serves as a pronoun that describes a group of people who, or things that, are prepared to begin, or ready. “We are all ready to sacrifice grandma.” 

Already: An adverb of time, already describes something that has happened before, or is presently underway with, something else: “We have (are) already sacrificed (ing) grandma.” 

All together: This describes how several things or people are currently oriented, or how something (or someone) is to be done, which is to say that everything or everyone is in one place or group, or that something (or someone) is to be done all at once: “Let’s put the Christmas trees all together, so that we can celebrate all together.”

Altogether: An adverb describing how something is to be done all in one place, or in a group, or otherwise all at once: “Why don’t we just throw the Christmas trees out altogether?” 

The same connective logic applies with a part: The indefinite article (a) and singular noun (part) describe one element that is not necessarily a part of a larger whole but could be: “A part of me believes that my toaster talks back to me, which could be a part of my problem.” A part cannot, although taken apart physically, cannot describe something that has been taken apart.

Apart unparted tempts those again with this tendency to confuse parted forms with the adverbial form, which, in this case, modifies “tear”: “You don’t want me in your house; I’ll tear that place apart.”

Any way: Any is a determiner; way is a noun. Witness and behold: “You could do the job in any way that you like, as long as you get it done.”

Anyway: “Forget it. You don’t have the correct tools, anyway.”

Some time: “I have some time on Friday to meet, if you would like.”

Sometime: “I would certainly like to meet sometime, but Friday does not work for me.”

Now consider the interesting case of a pace and apace.

A pace: A pace consists of an indefinite article (a) and a noun (pace): Select a pace on the treadmill that is right for you.”

Apace: An adverb that means to do something swiftly or quickly: “As I have only thirty minutes to complete five miles, I shall forsooth endeavor to move my legs apace.”

This pace case, although idiotically described, shows the vast area for misinterpretation of which the written word, if wielded incorrectly, is so easily capable, which is a nice segue into pure idiocy.

A lot—Allot—Alot 

A lot is used in English by all to bypass the Words of Number/Amount conundrum, as “a lot” can be used to refer to “a lot” of pencils on the desk, but also “a lot” of chocolate pudding spread all over the sidewalk. Allot is a verb that means to apportion or provide a certain amount of something to someone or another thing. 

Alot: not a word. 

This is all to say that there’s no way around it: Alright is an outright error, for alright is not a word; it attempts to supplant one word that already has its own logic with nothing. Alright attempts to slip the Trojan Horse in through the backdoor but doesn’t hold up. But enough of that talk. 

Fowler, Elster, and many other authorities on the English language hold firm that alright be either fashionable, barbarism, or something worse. The modern Fowler’s, fudged around with by Butterfield, suggests a compromise. Butterfield says that we should keep all right in its rightful place yet further asserts that alright could be used to distinguish from all as a pronoun, as in many of the above examples, as well as simply using alright for the adverbial form, much like we use already and altogether. He suggests two other reasons for a distinction to be made, but malarky smells worse whenever piled upon one another, I assume.