Multifarious Threads

Me, too.

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(content warning: child abuse, incest, filicide, ableism, anti-LGBTQ discrimination)

I am almost thirty-five years old, and I am deathly terrified of my own mother.

It’s especially painful at springtime, when Autism Parents™ are praised for their sacrifices and devotion to their difficult “children with autism.” The deification of Autism Parents doesn’t just annoy me; it horrifies me. Not every parent of an autistic child is a saint—some are downright monstrous. The most obvious examples are the filicidal parents who think that it’s better to have a dead child than an autistic child.

But in many cases, we’re put in situations in which we’re still alive and wish we weren’t. That was me. My parents were not good parents—ARE not good parents. We have been estranged for almost fifteen years. I severed contact with my parents in 2006 because of their psychological abuse and knee-jerk anti-LGBTQ ideology. Growing up was often chaotic and miserable, but I dissociated it all away. I was screamed at, humiliated, degraded, alienated, ridiculed, belittled, and objectified. People who spoke to my parents told me that they talked about me as though I were an object, a piece of furniture, not a sentient human being. I was convinced that my parents were kind, loving, and thoughtful, and I was just a difficult child. After all, I was—am—autistic. It didn’t help that my parents, especially my mother, ran hot and cold, so I never knew where I stood; the ground under me was always shifting.

Recently, I figured out that the abuse I experienced went beyond the psychological. I’m scared to mention this, as though I’ll be hauled into my parents’ bedroom for questioning as I was when I lived with them.

I didn’t know that it went that far because I thought what happened was normal. In my household, children were effectively property. We were extensions of the couple, not people with rights, feelings, or opinions of our own.

So I thought showering with my mother starting at the age of nine, even when I’d showered by myself for several years, was normal.

I thought it was normal for mothers to make constant sexual jokes with their adolescent children.

I thought it was normal for mothers to comment about the smell of their teenage children’s crotches.

I thought it was normal for mothers to tell me to keep it down, or others would hear and think they were hurting me.

Mom’s M.O. was sanctimony on Sunday morning and sleaze on Sunday night.

I knew about child sexual abuse, but everything I read was about internet predators, strangers in creepy vans, and depraved coaches and uncles. I’d even heard about female perpetrators, but they were all teachers who’d assaulted their students—not mothers, and especially not long-suffering Autism Moms who had to deal with the excruciating burden of raising difficult children like me. Mothers and their children were supposed to have inviolable bonds with one another. People told me that my mother was the best friend I’d ever have.

I remember a conversation from when I was about nineteen, when Mom was worried I’d tell my friends online about my parents. She said that she was worried someone would come and kill them. My parents didn’t think words could have any lasting effect, so what was she afraid of? My mother would brag about me to her friends, but would be sure to badmouth me—in my presence, even, as though I weren’t there—to therapists and teachers. I suspect that she wanted to discredit me to any mandated reporter I might speak to. That bespeaks a guilty conscience, at least to me. If she thought she was doing everything right, there would be nothing to fear.

Even as I write this, I worry that I made it up, imagined it, just want to make excuses or something, that I somehow deserved it, that it was normal. But if I knew that this was happening to someone else, I’d get in touch with the relevant authorities. That’s how I know it’s wrong.

There was so much pressure for me to act as though my family were normal, even though I know I would have been horrified, even back then, to hear that someone else was treated the way I was. It seems obvious now—her creepy slasher-film smile, the crude jokes, the showers, the paranoia, her cold eyes—but it wasn’t back then. The abuse I went through was woven into my everyday life. I thought that all families were like this, or that I was uniquely deserving of such treatment.

This was not normal. This was not all right; this was not OK.

And most chillingly, I think she knew it; otherwise, she wouldn’t be so afraid. If she thought she was such a good parent, any accusations would just roll off. She must have known at some level that what she did was wrong.

This is part of why I am livid every time I see people glorifying Autism Parents™ without acknowledging that some don’t deserve the glory. There are a lot of good parents, but some of them are downright rotten—murderers, emotional abusers, child molesters, child batterers.

Mom, your reign of terror is over. I’ve been gone for almost fifteen years, and I haven’t regretted leaving for an instant. I’ve been homeless. I’ve been poor, isolated, unsure where the next meal is coming from or whether I’d be protected from the elements. I’m comfortable now, but even if I weren’t, I wouldn’t regret leaving, because I am no longer with you.

Baloney!

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A graphic saying, “Baloney.” The text is written over a photo of bologna slices.

Imagine that I’m at a restaurant—Chez Snob—that purports to offer haute cuisine.1 After spending a few minutes looking through all the choices on the menu, I decide on a steak with herbed butter, duchess potatoes, asparagus, and a glass of Veuve Clicquot.

Several minutes later, the waiter shows up at my table, proudly presenting me with a bologna sandwich made with soggy Wonder Bread, off-brand American “cheese,” gobs of cloyingly sweet mayonnaise, a single piece of wilted iceberg lettuce, and a tasteless watery tomato slice. Instead of the glass of Veuve Clicquot I expected, I receive a half-empty cup of grape Kool-Aid.

“Excuse me? This isn’t what I ordered.” The waiter shoots me a withering look, claiming that this bait-and-switch is acceptable because the restaurant adheres to the principle of “descriptive gastronomy.”

“After all,” he says, “most people are more likely to eat bologna sandwiches than haute cuisine.”

“But, sir, that’s not what I ordered. If I wanted a bologna sandwich, I would have made one at home, but I don’t even like bologna. And I certainly wasn’t expecting grape Kool-Aid.”

“Are you trying to tell me that bologna sandwiches aren’t valid food, or that grape Kool-Aid isn’t a real drink? That’s just a classist prejudice.”

“That’s beside the point. Bologna sandwiches may be food, all right, but I didn’t come to your restaurant for bologna. Even if you’re serving those sandwiches ‘ironically,’ they’re not what I came for.”

As the waiter continues to prattle about the merits of descriptive gastronomy and my unconscionable prejudice against bologna sandwiches, I turn tail and walk out of the restaurant, reminding myself to post a negative review online once I’m back home.

Let’s imagine another restaurant: Big Momma’s Bar-B-Q. Unlike Chez Snob, Big Momma’s is honest. The cashier tells you that you’re going to get pulled pork with tangy barbecue sauce, collard greens, coleslaw, cornbread, and baked beans, and that’s exactly what you get—good old-fashioned down-home cooking, all served up in white polystyrene containers filled to bursting. No frills, no nonsense. But the descriptive-gastronomy fans conflate Chez Snob’s bait-and-switch bologna with Big Momma’s pulled pork and baked beans. I know what I’m getting at Big Momma’s, but Chez Snob is serving junk and presenting it as fine dining.

We can extend the analogy further: picture a “descriptive” car dealership that claims to sell Ferraris and Bentleys, but the only cars on the lot are beat-up Chevrolets and Toyotas, or a “descriptive” art-supply store that sells you discount-brand markers that go dry as soon as you open them instead of the Derwent pencils you asked for, because “more people use these than Derwent products.” The course description for a “descriptive” graphic-design class may promise to teach students professional techniques, but the professor decides to teach you how to make flyers in Microsoft Word instead, all set in Comic Sans, Arial, Algerian, Times New Roman, Curlz MT, and Impact. After all, regular people design flyers in Word using system typefaces.

Most people will see the absurdity of Chez Snob’s bologna sandwiches or Honest John’s Descriptive Dealership, but far too many think similar attitudes toward usage and grammar are acceptable. People with these attitudes have made a fetish of amateurism and mediocrity that would be unacceptable in most other fields. They claim to defend Big Momma’s soul food, but they’re just shilling for Chez Snob’s bologna sandwiches.

Don’t be hoodwinked into accepting weak writing, substandard spelling, and unsophisticated usage because of “descriptive grammar,” as I was for several years. I worried that if I didn’t share those views, I would be oppressive or excessively critical. Defending African American Vernacular English and other dialects from racist and classist attacks is the right thing to do, but that openness needn’t extend to editorial nuisances like between you and I, alot, dining at it’s best, apple’s $1/lb, miniscule, ad nauseum, and your not serious. All these are the products of confusion, carelessness, and inadequate education, not distinct cultural practices and norms. Nonjudgmental research practices are no cause to denounce editorial standards simply because untrained or poorly trained writers don’t adhere to them. That’s just baloney.

  1. Let’s just pretend that COVID doesn’t exist for this scenario. ↩

Words about Words

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A graphic that says, "Words About Words." The sentence is written four times on a green background.
A graphic that says, “Words about Words.” The title is written four times on a green background.

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
    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 has value only 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.

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

Everything Counts in Large Amounts (1)

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

A graphic saying, “Everything Counts in Large Amounts: Why Good Usage, Inclusive Language, and Typography Matter.”

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.

  1. What is it with these people and misspelling all right, anyway? Their constant advocacy of alright makes me even less likely to accept it. ↩
  2. 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

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A graphic listing several collision-course compounds, including "alot," "primetime," "indepth," and "eachother."
A graphic listing several collision-course compounds, including “alot,” “primetime,” “indepth,” and “eachother.”

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.