I'm in a quandry about this word or two words (whatever the case may be). I was reading up on the rules of a certain competition and there was some advice given of how writers should double check their entries. One of them was the use of the word 'alright'. They made it sound as if it was a no-no. In the dictionary it's described as: Alternative, the less acceptable, spelling of all right. Much used in informal contexts.

So does this mean that it can be used in written dialogue i.e. 'It's alright.' without being frowned upon by the editors/publishers/agents or seen as a flaw in the writer's grammar/methods etc?? Or is it less acceptable whether in dialogue or not? I have to say that writing 'It's all right.' just doesn't look right!

Would appreciate some thoughts on this.

Nahed

Nahed,

The current accepted practice is that 'all right' should always be used in formal writing, never 'alright'. For 'formal' you can include novels, short stories, etc. You raise an interesting point about dialogue spelling. However, dialogue is still 'formal' if it appears, say, in a novel. You would only change the spelling of dialogue words if it was absolutely necessary for pronunciation reasons. But just because someone might be speaking in a modern voice, you shouldn't change the spelling when the sound is the same (as in 'alright' and 'all right'. For example, you wouldn't have a character say, "What are you doing tonite?" or "C U l8r" (excuse me, my text language is non-existent), even if they might think like that. And you're right to consider what editors/agents will consider good or bad written English. On the whole, they are very wary of trendy spellings, mainly because they date so quickly.

Terry

In days when some entire *published* novels have been written completely in txt talk, I find it difficult to believe that there is a "standard practice", and would instead advise anyone to write however looks most right to them.

Good question Nahed. This is one of my bug bears. I always write 'alright' and then have to correct it to read 'all right' but it irks me to do so because, 'alright' feels like it should be a word in its own right.

By the way I don't know the answer but I'm sticking with 'all right' till somebody tells me different.

Peter

Hi Word's Worth,

It's only an opinion, but I would say it's acceptable to use "alright" in dialogue, but I wouldn't use it in the narrative (it's similar to "Okay", which is fine if spoken but not so fine in standard text, unless you're an American, in which case the usual rules don't apply).

It depends on the context, though:

"Everything's all right now," said George. "It's time for bed."
"Alright, Dearest," Tony replied with a lewd wink. "I'm coming."

:-)
Nigel

Thanks all for your replies.

Nigel, it's funny you should give those two examples, because when I write and go over the ms with the spelling and grammar tool in winword it will change it according to the example sentences you've given. It will accept 'alright' in certain sentences but will change sugget to use 'all right' in others. I too can see the difference where 'all right' should be used and as I said, I lean to 'alright' when it's being used as 'Alright, where's everybody gone?'. The word alright in this context doesn't even mean 'all right' - but everyone knows what it means, if you see what I mean...hmmm.

I'm going to have to go with Peter and just amend everything to 'all right' no matter how odd it looks. But I do think that editors/agents/teachers etc should reconsider the word 'alright' and make it a more acceptable alternative.

Nahed

<Added>

Oh and Terry, I realise you weren't winking at me there in the middle of your paragraph and your close bracket got stuck behind a semi-colon...but it made me smile nonetheless. Your advice is much appreciated as always.

I didn’t even realise that ‘alright’ was acceptable! I always use ‘all right’ because of the way it is pronounced. The single L in alright means, to me, that it should be pronounced ‘al’ as in Al Jolson, whereas the ‘all’ in all right is pronounced ‘orl’.

Am I making sense? I’ve had the shittiest day at work and my brain is dribbling out of my ears, so forgive me if I talk gibberish tonight… All right! Who said what’s different?

ee.
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