On Monday, March 25, 2002, at 07:31  AM, Brian Randall wrote:

"Are you all right?" Ranma asked Akane, peering sideways to catch a

glimpse

of the Tendo girl struggling to breathe.

    all right -- alright (I think)

I've often wondered about this.  I've written a few fanfics in my
time, and sometimes I get C&C saying 'alright' should be 'all right',
sometimes I get C&C saying the opposite.  I don't know if it's an
American thing or just differing opinions between various writers.

    http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=alright&r=2

    Depends on what you think. I tend to pronounce it as a single word
when I speak it, so I suggest the shortened version. Of course, this is
dialogue, so I would think that if you can write in slurs and speech
impediments, 'alright' would be just fine, all things considered.

    But, I'm probably wrong.

Heh heh heh...see Gary's note on this...

Linguistically there might be a couple reasons for "alright" be be 
acceptable. Mostly since linguists are descriptive grammarians--they try 
to find the rules inherent in the way people actually think, speak, and 
write, not just making up rules for grammar according to what they think 
is proper. It can't be denied that a lot of people use "alright."

However, that seems to be pretty much it as far as I can tell...I know 
of no other reasons for accepting "alright." The main problem stems from 
it meaning and being pronounced exactly the same as "all right." (Not 
like in the case of "already" and "all ready," whose meaning diverges.) 
There's no difference in pronunciation at all whether you think of it as 
one word or two...you're not going to pause between the syllables in 
either case. You may perceive of it as one concept mentally, but we've 
got a lot of similar things in English that we perceive of as one 
concept that are two words..."a lot" is one of these, and fewer people 
find "alot" acceptable. (Note: there ARE a couple places where I'm more 
likely to pronounce "all right" more distinctly separating the 
syllables, such as when "right" is a predicate adjective like in "I got 
them all right." The distinction is what the adverb "all" is modifying. 
If it modifies "right" then the liquid "l" tends to blend into the "r" 
of the next syllable. But if it modifies some other part of the 
sentence, it remains more separate.)

Now, if you actually do pronounce it differently, such as "awright" or 
just "ahright," then spell it THAT way and no one will have a problem 
with it...that you're using dialect or ideolect will be obvious. But 
deliberately using "alright" since it doesn't indicate any pronunciation 
difference will more likely be seen as an error.

Peter


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