Little Things Never Mean ‘Alot’

You know how there are some things that you just can’t remember, however many times you’re told? The precise date of your wedding anniversary perhaps or whose turn it is to take the dog for a walk when it’s blowing a hooley outside? Well you won’t be surprised to read that for me it’s usually something to do with words that gets me all of a muddle. In this case it was that I can never remember if ‘all right’ is one or two words (as in, “Bob asked if Rachel was all right”).

So I typed “Bob asked if Rachel was alright” and my spell checker didn’t flag an error. That would seem to indicate that was correct but it seemed a bit strange to me. So I looked it up and found that I was wrong, “alright” is just a frequently misspelled version of “all right”. There is (whatever my inadequate spellchecker may say) no such word as “alright”. Just as there’s no such word as “alot”.

The (mis)use of “alot” throughout online writing shows just how popular the misconception that it’s a valid word is, like the use of “should of” and “would of” when people actually mean “should have” and “would have”. This lack of correct English usage bothers me to a ridiculous and comical extent – if I were Donald Duck there would be steam coming out of my ears and I’d be swearing  profusely in a quacky manner – but does it really matter? What harm is there in someone just using a word incorrectly?

The obvious answer is ‘none’, of course. It does no damage whatsoever (apart to my blood pressure). The public at large doesn’t care about such things, as is obvious by their routinely referring to those of us who do care as ‘grammar Nazis’. Our ruling classes are apparently beginning to agree with them too with several councils recently announcing that they will remove apostrophes from all official signs to avoid public confusion. This particular member of the public doesn’t agree with that viewpoint as I most certainly am not confused by the endangered apostrophe. The argument comparing gerunds against verbal nouns confuses me, yes, but not apostrophes.

Apostrophes are an important part of our language and removing them would be as confusing as, say, suddenly deciding to eliminate commas or do away with the odd superfluous letter or two from our alphabet. How would we know the difference between the following two sentences if not for the humble apostrophe?

“The frog’s exploded.”
“The frogs exploded.”

Or what about this classic that shows perfectly how useful a comma can be?

“Let’s eat, Grandma.”
“Let’s eat Grandma.”

And don’t get me started on the importance of using the correct version of they’re / there / their. While I see the need for a language to evolve as its use changes, I’m not a fan of devolution due to user idleness.

That’s it, rant over for this week. I think I need a sit down with a nice cup of tea and a copy of ‘Eats, Shoots and Leaves’.

© Shaun Finnie 2013