Words about Words

26th January 2021 by Finn Gardiner Leave a Comment

I have opinions about language. Here’s a nonexhaustive list.

Accouterments. Admittedly, I dislike the entire concept of American spelling, but Webster’s changes are too entrenched to be jettisoned entirely. We can, however, safely reject accouterment, a needless variant that has never predominated in any English dialect.

Alot and alright. A lot of people use these, but their spelling isn’t all right. You may wonder why I’ve spent so much time on these unholy mash-ups of a lot and all right, but at least one writer has dedicated an entire book to ain’t.

Doubtless because anti-peevers have made alright their darling, I’ve come to despise this “one-word travesty.”¹ It’s a contractual obligation for anti-peevers to write apologias for it, and I groan every time I see one of them defending this hideous collision-course compound. I suspect the proliferation of alright in rock, pop, and hip-hop lyrics leads them to think that misspelling all right will grant them some kind of coolness by association. No, writing alright doesn’t make you look cool; it just shows that you can’t spell a common phrase. The cool kids won’t notice, and they’ll still think you’re a dork.
Alright is cheap, plasticky, ephemeral; all right, in contrast, is solid, substantial, real. Alright is Arial; all right is Helvetica. Alot, on the other hand, is Comic Sans or Kristen ITC. A lot would be something like Candara—relaxed and casual, but not crass.
I won’t say that alright isn’t a word: it is, but it’s not a very good one—in fact, it’s a nonword. Nonwords are technically words, but they have no reason for being. ² Other such words are alot, irregardless, and thusly.
Regard with suspicion any usage pundit who endorses—or worse, uses—alright. And if they defend alot, their advice is worthless.
If I had a dollar for every time someone claimed erroneously that alright was now standard, I’d be rich. The 2019 Google ngram data show that all right still predominates in printed books. In fact, the gap between all right and alright is the widest it’s been—there were more alright instances for every all right in the Seventies than there are now. There are more absolute alright instances than there were in the Seventies, but the proportion of alrights to all rights has decreased dramatically, since there are more absolute instances of the standard all right, too. There’s a slight dip in all right toward the end, but tonight, a lot, and today also decline at the same point on the graph without a corresponding rise in to-day, alot, alright, and to-night. (Perhaps there were fewer data available for 2018 and 2019.) Editors have been open to other compounds, such as today and underway, but alright just hasn’t caught on:
2019 Google ngram showing the predominance of “all right” in printed books

And alot is barely a blip:
Other compound words have gained more traction, such as healthcare:
The solid copyediting overtook the two-word copy editing in the Eighties:
Today overtook to-day about a hundred years ago, and tonight became predominant about a decade later:
The solidification of underway was underway by the 1950s, and the one- and two-word forms have been neck-and-neck ever since:
If I were forced to choose between ain’t and alright (or alot), I’d choose ain’t. Ain’t comes by its folksiness honestly, but alright is an impostor. I’ve come to personify it as Al Wright, an oleaginous used-car salesman who won’t shut up about his “great” deals. As for alot, even Sir Mix-a-Lot doesn’t use alot in his handle. Even the buffoonish irregardless is useful in dialogue, but alot and alright are mere pests.
Alright is an impostor because Modern English all-compounds (like all right) generally have the full word spelled out, as in all sorts, all-inclusive and all done. Words like already come from Old English. Al- is no longer an actively used prefix. I suspect this may be why alright was derided so early on. If we are to admit it, we must also admit alsorts, alinclusive and alnight.
Alot and alright may be slang, all right, but they’re not particularly good slang. Gonna and ain’t sound different from their standard counterparts. Aright, arright or the African American Vernacular English aight will do if we need to transcribe a syncopated pronunciation of all right, and alot has no benefit over a lot.
I use alot and alright as a litmus test when I’m reading fiction online. If I see them, I lower my expectations accordingly.

“But as there are books that are not books, so there are words that are not words. Most of them are usurpers, interlopers, or vulgar pretenders; some are deformed creatures, with only half a life in them; but some of them are legitimate enough in their pretensions, although oppressive, intolerable, useless. Words that are not words sometimes die spontaneously; but many linger, living a precarious life on the outskirts of society, uncertain of their position, and a cause of great discomfort to all right-thinking, straightforward people.” —Richard Grant White, Words and Their Use, 1882.

American spelling. Unnecessary, confusing, and often ugly, but we’re stuck with it. I’d just like it not to appear where it doesn’t belong; for instance, American publishers should let British spelling stand.

Around. Whatever happened to about? People are forever talking about conversations around COVID-19 policy, videoconferences around systemic racism, seminars around homelessness and unstable housing. It’s less euphonious than about.

Between you and I. Downright rebarbative. Even this ungrammatical expression has its defenders—typically descriptivist anti-peevers who are determined to love all the infelicities the rest of us hate.

Business jargon. Going forward, take it offline, incentivize, synergy, scalable, best-of-breed, deliverables, knowledge translation, technical assistance, parameters, key stakeholders, capacity-building, mission-critical, operationalize, grow the business, core competencies, buy-in. Give me a break.

Canceled. Bleh. The predominant spelling in World English is cancelled, so American editors should allow it.

Company names for software products. Although Google and Facebook have company names that match their primary products, Microsoft and Adobe do not. It is therefore an error to talk about “Microsoft” or “Adobe” as though they were themselves programs. “Microsoft” typically means Windows or Microsoft Office. “Adobe” means either Photoshop or Acrobat.

Descriptivists. Many self-described descriptivists are more accurately reformers—or deformers. The encroachment of extreme descriptivist doctrine on usage and rhetoric has done both fields a disservice. Usage and rhetoric focus on the social, semantic, and aesthetic components of language, while descriptivist practices focus on aspects of language that are beneath our notice. Meaning is secondary to sound and structure, which is entirely backward—language only has value because it is a social tool that conveys meaning. Speech and writing are conscious acts, but descriptivists have deprived us of our agency, and their insistence that their practice is objectively true prevents them from being gainsaid.

By marginalising everything ‘else’, linguistic theory implicitly makes very strong claims which are in no way ideologically inert when they are presented as the only ‘scientifically’ valid way of looking at the language. For the items thus marginalised are the sine qua non of language. —Roy Harris, The Language Machine

Esthetic. A self-defeating spelling. An ugly relic of early-twentieth-century spelling deformation—I mean, reform.

The generic he. This needs to die.

Glamor. Markedly unglamorous.

Gray. This should be a name, not a shade.

I could care less. Mildly annoying.

Impact (verb) and impactful. Irritating words that smack of business jargon. “Impactful” is particularly grating.

Individuals. Often used as a overblown synonym for “people.” I suspect the people who use it think, “Let’s add more syllables to sound more serious!” That’s if they think about it at all, of course.

Language change as an excuse for mistakes. Languages aren’t static, but that doesn’t mean that we must accept every nonstandard form that arises. (I’m looking at you, I could care less, between you and I, miniscule, and impactful.) We have the right to make choices about the words we use, and I refuse to say impactful.

Misused punctuation. Amusingly wrong.

The Oxford comma. I’m neutral. Sorry.

Permissive style manuals and usage guides. Neutral descriptions of usage, whether standard or not, are useful for researchers, but they’re less helpful in practice. As an editor, I need to make quick judgment calls, and wishy-washy statements are unacceptable. The writers of usage guides and style manuals shouldn’t shame or berate their readers; nevertheless, they should give clear guidance based on current editorial practice. (No, linguistic corpora that include error-ridden tweets, your aunt’s knitting blog, and YouTube comments don’t count.)

Scepter. No.

The singular they. Without question. I use it all the time.

Social-justice argot. Cisheteropatriarchy, kyriarchy, settler colonialism, problematic, erasure, bourgeois liberals, microaggressions. I agree with most of the principles, but do we need to use all this highfalutin language? Admittedly, I use some myself but avoid it when talking to people who don’t have a background in queer or feminist theory.

It’s especially irritating to see activist jargon mixed with management-speak, so we end up being incentivized to dismantle the cisheteropatriarchical paradigm by unpacking our settler-colonialist mindset around our role in bourgeois liberal society, and developing impactful strategies to foster inclusivity and to challenge the systemic erasure of marginalized body-minds. (And don’t get me started on people who manage to use activist jargon, management-speak, and random slang and pop-culture references. OMG, like, what a mess.)

Spellcheckers. Most of them are too permissive for my tastes. I edit as part of my work, and I want to be able to spot nonstandard terms when I’m editing. I use a custom spellchecker, from which I’ve expunged alright, irregardless, thusly, miniscule, and incentivize.

Theater. Yuck. The -er spelling feels rough and unsuited to the medium it describes. American editors should allow theatre.

Kingsley Amis (1997), The King’s English. ↩
Bryan Garner (2016), Garner’s Modern English Usage, p. 630. ↩

Everything Counts in Large Amounts (1)

23rd January 2021 by Finn Gardiner Leave a Comment

(Content warning: brief mention of the R-word)

My positions on standard English, inclusive language, and good typography stem from the same principle: consideration and empathy for readers. These principles underlie everything I do: editing my colleagues’ writing to make it more effective, writing plain-language summaries of research articles, using layout and design to reinforce ideas in people’s minds, and listening to community members to learn how they want to be described. In this two-part series, I’ll discuss why these principles matter. The first part focuses on standard English and inclusive language; the next one will focus on typography.

Standard English and the Anti-Peever Club

Informative writing intended for general audiences, such as policy briefs and newspaper articles, should be written in standard English. Although they may understand some forms of nonstandard English, people are less likely to be confused, annoyed, or distracted by standard spelling, punctuation, word choice, and grammar. Regrettably, some people—let’s call them anti-peevers—claim that that most usage recommendations are pointless. (Anti-peevers often describe themselves as “descriptivists,” but descriptive linguistics is a method, not an ideology. Anti-peeverism is assuredly ideological; it’s a form of linguistic populism, not neutral descriptivism.) These linguistic populists imply or say outright that New Yorker articles and YouTube comments about chemtrails are equally “right.”

Admittedly, many usage pundits do err by declaring certain usages objectively wrong. Some declarations are based on long-discredited “rules,” such as the injunctions against split infinitives and sentence-ending prepositions. The continued resistance to the hypothetical singular they is excessively pedantic, as is American editors’ tendency to lop the S off towards. Anti-peevers are right to spurn these “rules,” but reasonable prescriptivists reject them, too.

Some anti-peevers will go even further by using or defending nonstandard expressions like alot, alright, irregardless, I could care less, and anyways. Some disputed usages, such as the singular they, deserve to be defended, but the self-contradictory irregardless and I could care less don’t address the need for clear or inclusive language. Even the anti-peevers’ beloved alright¹ doesn’t add much clarity: all right is ambiguous regardless of its spelling. Alright and irregardless mean the same things as all right and regardless but are more likely to annoy and distract for no good reason. The singular they, on the other hand, allows for more flexible and inclusive language.

Contrarian posturing is not the same as fighting oppression. Sometimes it’s flashing a membership card: “I’m part of the Anti-Peever Club! I don’t care about good usage, and you shouldn’t, either!” At other times, it’s little more than trolling. The nonstandard forms anti-peevers defend, like anyways and I could care less, are not associated with any particular class, culture, or race; they’re slangy expressions that shouldn’t appear in writing outside dialogue or Facebook posts. (And some of them, such as alot and alright, are just misspellings that should be avoided altogether.). Defending African American Vernacular English and gender-inclusive language is laudable, but anti-peevers’ promotion of widely reviled forms is more juvenile than it is liberative. It is the verbal equivalent of teenagers deliberately choosing outfits that their parents hate: “You’re not the boss of me!” Anti-peevers use language change as a shield against criticism, but the nonstandard expressions they promote are not new. Anti-peevers from generations past have made similar arguments to their modern counterparts, often about the same words.

When anti-peevers defend such misbegotten forms as alot and alright, they insult writers’ intelligence, too: it’s no great feat to put a space between a and lot, or all and right. Although these errors are indeed common, mere frequency does not justify their use: after all, plenty of people use it’s for its. Anti-peevers also make excuses for the parlous state of writing education throughout the English-speaking world. Most people who use alot and alright don’t know any better. This isn’t their fault—it’s the fault of the education system—but mass ignorance isn’t an excuse for allowing errors and nonstandard variants to appear in edited writing apart from the creative liberties used in fiction, some forms of narrative nonfiction, and poetry. People who care—copyeditors and publishers—set the standards, not YouTube commenters, and our adherence to standard forms allows readers to focus on the message, not writers’ perceived errors. When anti-peevers invoke “common usage,” it’s important to consider whose usage they’re talking about. Are they talking about people who care about language and its use, or are they talking about people who don’t write or edit for a living and don’t particularly care? Why should we focus on those who don’t care, rather than those who do? After all, we’re the ones who will notice.

Linguistic research should be nonjudgmental, but in the real world, people do care about how others write and speak. Using nonstandard language in professional or formal settings has real-world consequences, and we all have to eat. Typos, misspellings, poorly chosen words, and punctuation errors, including disputed spellings such as miniscule for minuscule, pull readers out of your writing. It’s hard to focus when your is used for you’re, apostrophes are used to make words plural, and definitely is repeatedly spelled definately. People may know what you mean when you write apple’s for sale, but many will notice that you misused an apostrophe and take you less seriously because of it.

In “Making Peace in the Language Wars,” the lexicographer and usage pundit Bryan Garner writes: “This doctrine relieves English teachers of the responsibility to teach standard English. And it dooms us all to the dialect of the households in which we’ve grown up. One result is rigidified social strata. After all, you’re unlikely to gain any responsible position—such as that of a linguistics professor—if you can’t speak and write standard English. So much for egalitarianism.”²

Garner is right—anti-peeverism is less progressive than it is libertarian, more “I’m all right, Jack” or “I’ve got mine, screw you” than “you do you.” Most anti-peevers know the rules of standard English, even if they don’t follow many of them. It is a bitter irony that the self-proclaimed defenders of popular speech are frequently white people from upper-middle-class backgrounds who have never suffered the indignity of linguistic discrimination. In a particularly egregious example of anti-peever libertarianism, Oliver Kamm, a journalist and the Oxford-educated scion of a publishing family, wrote Accidence Will Happen, a permissive “guide” to English usage that gives the seal of approval to several nonstandard usages, including a few of my bêtes noires. Those of us who came from less exalted backgrounds may have fewer excuses to use nonstandard variants lest we be thought uneducated. I did not grow up in a professional middle-class or upper-middle-class family. I work with words and ideas; my parents and grandparents did not. Kamm, however, is happy to climb the professional ladder and pull it up behind him.

The Trouble with Noninclusive Language

Anti-peevers aren’t the only ones who disdain the importance of usage recommendations. Thoughtless prescriptivists will defend noninclusive language as ardently as anti-peevers defend I could care less and irregardless: hearing impaired, people with autism, the generic he. I use “noninclusive language” to refer to any terms that are biased against, outright offensive to, or rejected by marginalised people. To be clear, dismantling misogyny, racism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, classism, and other kinds of discrimination does not start or end with language; nevertheless, changes in language often occur alongside changes in attitudes toward marginalised groups. Using inclusive language shows consideration for the people you describe.

Slurs are an example of noninclusive language, but less obvious examples also exist. For example, deaf people and people with hearing loss usually prefer deaf, Deaf, hard of hearing, or people with hearing loss, not hearing impaired, and many autistic people prefer autistic or person on the autism spectrum, not person with autism and person with autism spectrum disorder. Activists with intellectual disabilities and their allies have long deplored the use of retarded and mental retardation. More recently, anti-weight-bias advocates have highlighted the problems with some of the words used to describe larger people, especially one that starts with an O and rhymes with “fleece.” Although these medical terms may not be used with the same malicious intent as outright slurs, their continued use implies that the outsiders’ views take precedence over those of insiders.

Like the anti-peevers who are enamoured of irregardless and I could care less, defenders of noninclusive language care more about their agenda than they do their readers, especially if the readers belong to the groups they discuss. Like anti-peevers, defenders of noninclusive language will often cite common usage: “That’s what everybody says, anyway.” “You know what I mean!” “Who made you the Language Police?” “It’s a free country!” “But doctors use it, so it’s OK!” Again, it’s important to ask yourself, “whose common usage?” What is their agenda? How do they feel about gender, race, disability, culture, or religion? Of course people have the right to say and write whatever they want, but that doesn’t mean they should. Common usage isn’t always the best usage.

Anti-peevers who—rightly—oppose noninclusive language are less destructive than prescriptivist defenders of noninclusive language, but both groups contradict their stated ideals. Anti-peevers do recommend, and prescriptivists do explain, and sometimes their recommendations and explanations are annoying at best and outright toxic at worst.

Drop people with autism and hearing impaired, unless the person you’re writing about insists on them. Use autistic people, people on the autism spectrum, and hard of hearing: those who care will notice your consideration, and those who do not won’t see the difference anyway.

What is it with these people and misspelling all right, anyway? Their constant advocacy of alright makes me even less likely to accept it. ↩
Garner, B.A. (2016). “Making Peace in the Language Wars,” in Garner’s Modern English Usage, p. xxxvi. New York: Oxford University Press. ↩

Collision-Course Compounds

1st December 2020 by Finn Gardiner Leave a Comment

Both novice and professional writers struggle with word-boundary errors. A common spelling mistake is to turn two-word phrases like at least and of course into Frankenstein’s monsters: atleast and ofcourse. Some of these errors are well known—the notorious nonwords alot and alright come to mind—but others, such as everytime, eachother, and aswell, are common in blog posts, social-media statuses, and personal emails. People who wrongly run words together tend to do it repeatedly; writers who use alot and everytime also write alright and atleast. Avoid the following collision-course compounds—yes, even alright—if you want to preserve your credibility as a writer. I’ve bolded the incorrect spellings; the correct spellings are in parentheses after the mistaken versions.

abit (a bit) Abit is not a word. Use a bit.
afew (a few) A few is always two words. Afew, on the other hand, sounds like a sneeze.
afterall (after all) Overall is one word, but after all isn’t.
alittle (a little) The rampant use of alot has given rise to similar fake compounds like aload, afew, and alittle. A little is two words.
allday (all-day or all day) All day is always two words (either spaced as an adverb phrase or hyphenated as an adjective in front of a noun), just like all right and all sorts.
aload (a load) This faux word is yet another one of alot’s offspring. A load is two words.
alongwith (along with)
alot and allot (a lot) The standard spelling for the phrase meaning “many” is a lot, two words, although alot appears frequently in unedited writing, more so than any other collision-course compound. Alot is still wrong. Allot means to distribute. Where alot is found, alright, ofcourse, and eachother are likely to appear.
alover (all over) Alright has spawned even more collision-course compounds, like alover, alaround, and alsorts. The expression all over, as in “all over the place,” is two words. Alover looks as though it should mean “a lover.” All-over is the adjective form (e.g., “an all-over print”), although some dictionaries list allover instead. Regardless, all over always has two Ls.
alright and allright (all right) Alright is not all right. The overwhelming majority of usage experts and style manuals recommend using all right—two words, two Ls—and avoiding alright and allright. Alright appears frequently in unedited, poorly edited, and informal writing, typically out of ignorance. Ignore anyone defending alright; most alright apologists don’t write well anyway.
alround and alaround (all round and all around) Alround and alaround are to alright as alittle and abit are to alot. All around and all round are two-word phrases as adverbs and are hyphenated (all-around and all-round) when they’re directly before a noun. Allaround and allround are wrong, too.
alsorts or allsorts (all sorts) Like all right and all around, all sorts is two words. Liquorice Allsorts is a brand name.
anyday (any day)
asif (as if)
aslong (as long)
asmuch (as much) Inasmuch is a word, but asmuch on its own isn’t.
asoon (as soon)
aswell (as well) Aswell is a surname; as well is a two-word phrase.
atlast (at last)
atleast (at least) At least is always two words, though many people are under the impression that it’s atleast.
bestfriend (best friend) Teenagers on Instagram and TikTok may think bestfriend is a word, but it’s not.
boardgame (board game) A lot of people treat this as a one-word compound, but dictionaries still list “board game” as two words.
carpark (car park)
datacentre and datacenter (data centre or data center)
dataset (data set) This is properly two words, though it may become a solid one soon.
deadend (dead end)
eachother (each other) Each other is always two words. If you see people on social media spelling it eachother, they’re doing it wrong.
eventhough (even though) Although is one word, but even though is two.
everynight (every night)
everytime (every time) Sometime and anytime can be one word, but every time is always two words. Of all these spurious compounds, I suspect everytime is the likeliest to become standard.
filesystem (file system) This is still two words for now.
floorplan (floor plan) Some people spell this phrase as one word, but it’s not yet recorded in most dictionaries. Stick to the two-word version for now.
gameshow (game show)
golfball (golf ball)
goto (go to)
highschool (high school) Many high schools have failed to teach their students that high school is two words, not one.
highstreet (high street) Like high school, high street is two separate words.
icecream (ice cream) Ice cream is delicious, but icecream doesn’t exist.
inbetween (in between) In between is two words.
inapp (in-app) You can make in-app purchases, but to use inapp is inapt for any kind of writing.
incase (in case) In case you missed it, this expression is two separate words. Infact and infront aren’t words, either.
incharge (in charge)
indepth (in depth)
infact (in fact) Infact is not a word.
infront (in front) In front is two separate words, no hyphen necessary.
ingame (in-game) You can make in-game purchases, but not ingame ones.
inorder and innorder (in order)
instore (in store or in-store)
middleschool (middle school) When you’re in middle school, you should learn that it’s separate words.
moreso (more so) More so is always two words.
neverending (never-ending) The film may be The NeverEnding Story, but the standard term is never-ending, two hyphenated words.
nevermind (never mind) Unless you’re referring to Nirvana’s famous album, never mind is two words.
nomatter (no matter)
noone (no one) No one is two words. Some style manuals also allow the hyphenated no-one, but under no circumstances is the pronoun noone.
notime (no time) Notime is not a word; it’s two.
ofcourse (of course) “Ofcourse” sounds like a character from The Handmaid’s Tale, but the expression of course is written as two separate words.
ohwell (oh well)
ontop (on top) On top is always two words.
otherside (other side)
otherway (other way)
outloud (out loud) Aloud is one word, but out loud is two.
peanutbutter (peanut butter) This tasty condiment is spelled with two words, not one.
primetime (prime time) Primetime isn’t ready for prime time, at least not as a noun. While some spellcheckers pass primetime, it’s not a standard spelling.
seabass (sea bass) The annoying fish on Animal Crossing is a sea bass, not a seabass.
showtunes (show tunes) Showtime is one word, but showtunes and gameshow are not.
shutup (shut up) This is never one word.
Superbowl (Super Bowl) There is no such sporting event as the “Superbowl.”
thankyou (thank you) Thank you is two words, not one.
upto (up to) Upto is not a word.
videogame (video game) Video game is still two words, not one.

Sources

The Associated Press Stylebook, 2021.

Geoff Barton, “Geoff Barton’s 30 Essential Tips on English Usage for GCSE Grade C or Higher.”

Paul Brians, Common Errors in English Usage.

Gill Elliott et al., “Variations in aspects of writing in 16+ English examinations between 1980 and 2014.”

Robert Hartwell Fiske, Robert Hartwell Fiske’s Dictionary of Unendurable English,

Bryan A. Garner, Garner’s Modern English Usage, 4th edition

John Grimond and Ann Wroe (eds.) The Economist Style Guide, 2018

Bill Walsh, Yes, I Could Care Less.

Ben Yagoda, How to Not Write Bad.

The Charge of the “Alright” Brigade

10th September 2020 by Finn Gardiner Leave a Comment

Pokémon has this one all right, but a lot of people don’t. (And it's not "alot," either.) — Pokémon’s spelling is all right, but a lot of people’s isn’t. (And it’s not “alot,” either.)

[updated 18 October 2020 to include more historical information]

Summary: Avoid using the nonstandard alright for the two-word phrase all right, which predominates in well-edited writing. Most usage writers—people who show authors ways to make their writing more effective—recommend using all right instead of alright. If you wouldn’t use thru or lite in a piece, don’t use alright—using alright in serious writing is like going to an in-person job interview in flip-flops and baggy sweatpants.

All right, I’ll admit it: I don’t understand the love affair with alright. I’m no knee-jerk prescriptive reactionary; I don’t give a shit if you say ain’t or irregardless in informal conversations, and AAVE is fine by me, but the standard all right seems to work perfectly fine. I’ve never seen anyone argue in earnest for accepting the erroneous one-word forms of a lot, as well, of course, or each other in formal writing, even though alot, eachother, ofcourse, and aswell are also common mistakes. Why, then, does alright get the hero’s welcome when other spurious compounds don’t? Writing manuals, usage guides, and dictionaries will include notes about alright, but the arguments are little more than “Because I said so!” There are perfectly valid reasons to avoid alright, but they’re difficult to find in most usage manuals. Nevertheless, the pro-alright arguments are even weaker. I’ll address the most common ones here.

Argument 1: But “alright” is like already and although!

When people hear common phrases, they may process them as units even if they’re not written that way. That kind of thinking results in spurious compounds such as alot, alright, ofcourse, and bestfriend. When I was about four, I thought may as well was “mayas well” before I actually saw it in print.

Alright beguiles the unwary writer through its superficial resemblance to standard adverbial compounds like already and although. The analogy is less justifiable than it seems at first glance. The already merger makes sense, since all ready and already have very different meanings. The same applies to always and altogether, neither of which are the same as all ways and all together. All right can mean either “satisfactory” or “all correct,” but so does fine. OK can mean “acceptable,” “passable,” or in “good working order.” The spelling of fine doesn’t change to fyne when using it in the “OK” sense. Terms such as all right, OK, and fine are ambiguous in themselves; changing the spelling doesn’t resolve that ambiguity. The same applies to very well, which can express agreement, strong approval, or resignation. The phrase has not become “verywell,” except in the name of a health website. The weaker meanings of OK, fine, and all right are extensions of the stronger ones, but it’s less clear that already means “happened before,” but all ready means “all prepared.” Terms such as all right, OK, and fine are ambiguous in themselves; changing the spelling doesn’t resolve that ambiguity. Already had a reason to be distinguished from all ready, but alright is no different from all right. It’s an impostor that apes the appearance of a legitimate word by dropping the second l. If people were routinely writing “allright” instead, I can’t imagine anyone would give it the time of day.

Claims about the nonliteral nature of all right can also be used to defend ofcourse, aswell, and alot, none of which are acceptable.

Lexicographers—people who study how words are used and record those uses in dictionaries—record alright as a variant of all right, but it usually comes with a usage note saying that it’s less appropriate for formal writing than the two-word form. I’d go further and say alright shouldn’t be used at all. All right is invisibly correct, but alright will stand out to people who know the standard spelling. Alright is as different from all right as center is from centre, though regional spelling differences are defensible on cultural grounds. Alright, however, is no more acceptable than thru and irregardless. Dictionaries show how people actually use words, not how they should use them, which is why common nonstandard expressions such as ain’t, alright, and irregardless appear as entries.

Argument 2: Well, I like alright better than all right!

I must confess that I hate alright. Hate hate haaaaaate. (Unless it’s in a song title, then I’ll let it slide. But all right still looks better.) I think it’s an ungainly Frankenstein’s monster of a “word.” There’s no accounting for taste, but if you really want to use alright, be prepared to defend your decision; convention makes its use more trouble than it’s worth.

While alright appears frequently in unedited writing and popular media, it’s still considered nonstandard. For at least 120 years, usage commentators, editors, and stylists have recommended using the two-word form and rejecting the solid compound. Most people who spell it alright don’t even know that it’s supposed to be all right, anyway; usage-minded alright-ers are rare. If they cared about correct usage, they wouldn’t be spelling it alright. I’ve seen some people using alright on purpose to stick it to the Man; this practice is juvenile, not liberative.

Sometimes I worry I’m fighting a losing battle, but then again, people have been trying to make alright standard for more than a hundred years. I don’t think all right is going anywhere anytime soon—the 2019 update to the Google Books corpus shows that all right still predominates in print books. Moreover, the majority of British and American literary and journalistic style manuals ban alright. Journalists consider saving space when devising standards for spelling, punctuation and typesetting; if alright were worth the trouble, journalistic style guides would have adopted it. Editors have accepted other compounds over the past century—the formerly hyphenated today and tomorrow come to mind—which suggests that alright just doesn’t pass muster.

The following style manuals forbid the use of alright:

The Associated Press Stylebook, the standard manual for American journalistic writing, says, “all right, never alright.” The rule still stands in the 2021 version, released only a month ago. Newspapers love to save space, but they’re not trimming the space and “l” from all right to do it.
BBC News isn’t particularly stuffy with usage, and it’s been quicker to adopt certain one-word compounds (e.g., the positively Teutonic “styleguide”) than other outlets have been, but alright is still off-limits. The wording is similar: “all right, never alright, except for the television programme It’ll Be Alright on the Night.” The emphasis is theirs.
The US Government Printing Office’s style manual lists all right as the preferred spelling.
The New York Times is no friendlier to alright: “all right, never alright.”
The Chicago Manual of Style says that all right should be written as two words, and to “avoid alright, which has long been regarded as nonstandard.”
The Economist’s style guide includes all right in its list of two-word phrases.
The UK’s Daily Telegraph (aka the Torygraph) dubs alright an “abomination.” I wouldn’t go that far. I think John Scalzi would, though.

Some style manuals, such as The Guardian’s, equivocate about the acceptability of alright, but even these will note that alright is unacceptable to traditionalists. As far as I know, no style guide recommends alright over all right, and I’ve only seen one—the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s manual—that explicitly allows both. All right is unimpeachable, but alright is a much dicier proposition.

If you still really want to use alright despite all the warnings, be consistent about it. Don’t use all right in one paragraph and alright in the next. Go big or go home, y’all.

Conclusion: Alright isn’t all right, but I won’t correct your texts

My verdict: Don’t bother with alright; it’s a distraction. Would you use alot, eachother, or aswell? Then don’t use alright.

Rest assured I won’t correct your social-media posts and text messages. Promise. Pinkie swear. I was just talking to a friend the other day who spelled it alright. Want to know what I said to them about it? Absolutely nothing, because I’m not an asshole. If I’m editing your work professionally, however, it’s going to be all right. In these unprecedentedly troubling and uncertain times (insert mawkish piano music here), I think we need a full-bodied all right, in any case. All right? Good.

Nonprofit/Advocacy Jargon and Plain-Language Equivalents

25th July 2020 by Finn Gardiner Leave a Comment

Sometimes nonprofit organisations and advocacy groups use language that’s hard to understand. This even happens when organisations work with people who have a hard time understanding the kinds of words they use. What do capacity-building and stakeholders mean? This is a list of words that these groups sometimes use. I’ve explained what these things mean in simple words. I will be updating this list every so often, so make sure to check back.

Best practices

Doing things that work. That’s what it’s supposed to mean, anyway.

Capacity-building

Teaching, training, education or mentoring. Sometimes “capacity-building” can also mean hiring more people in an organisation so they can get more done. Just say what you mean: teaching, hiring, and mentoring are much clearer than “capacity-building.”

Development

When organisations talk about development, they often mean raising money. When organisations raise money, they can hire more people and get new supplies. That way, they can help more people.

Dissemination

Sharing information with people or organisations.

Engagement

Getting people’s attention.

Interventions

Ways to help people. Sometimes these interventions really do help, but some can hurt. It’s important to listen to the people you’re trying to help.

Knowledge transfer

Teaching, training, or education.

Knowledge-translation activities

Making things easier for people to understand. Some examples of knowledge translation include plain-language versions of articles, webinars, videos, and infographics.

Stakeholders

People who care about what you’re doing, or vampire hunters. Stakeholder engagement just means talking to people who care about your project, or getting them interested in what you’re doing.

Strategic planning

Long-term planning.

Technical assistance

Answering people’s questions to help them run their organisations. Not to be confused with tech support. You won’t be able to call Microsoft Technical Assistance to fix MS Word.