Have you ever blurted that phrase in the course of a hectic day? Chances are that you thought it was only a two-word exclamation. But it’s really three words. That’s right—the correct term is all right, not alright.
Next to already and altogether, the word alright looks solid and logical, all right. But altogether and already slipped into our lexicon way back in the Middle Ages. Their one-word pedigrees are well known and well respected. However, alright doesn’t have the advantage of time. The single word alright, which dictionaries often call a “confusion of all right,” is often found in informal dialogue or advertising. However, the correct form for any formal writing is still the two-word all right.
As an officially recognized expression, all right appeared sometime in the early 1800s. Some quarter-century later, its stepchild alright popped up. And since it looks so much like similar, correctly spelled similar words, many argue that it’s just fine to use alright. Emblazoned across t-shirts and billboards and posters, alright keeps many people from realizing that all right is actually the correct choice. For whatever reasons, the music media in particular has countless examples of how alright has us in its clutches:
“The Kids Are Alright” (1979 album from The Who)
“Feelin’ Alright” (Joe Cocker song)
“Everything Is Gonna Be Alright” (Bob Marley song)
“Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting” (Elton John song)
…and the list goes on and on. You get the idea. At least Elvis got it all right with “That’s All Right.” And more recent, grammatically shrewd writers seem to be staging a comeback for correctness with examples like the 1983 song “It’s All Right to Cry,” books How Can It Be All Right When Everything Is All Wrong? (Lewis B. Smedes, 2000) and It’s All Right Now: A Novel (Charles Chadwick, 2006), and the 2010 film The Kids Are All Right.
So, until it makes it officially into the Standard American English lexicon, just say, “No!” to alright. It’s all right if you do. You can believe us; we’re the ABC English/Language Arts team, and we know the score. And now you know that giving in to alright is all wrong.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Word of the Week: All right, already!
