The Oxford English Dictionary (online) includes ‘alright’ as a variant spelling of ‘all right’.

email: dougw@spamcop.net

message: Dear Dr. Goodword,

I just read your post about the alleged word “alright”. This word makes me cringe at an almost cellular level. I must say that your defense of “alright” almost made sense to me, but upon consideration of your arguments I believe that they are insufficient to make the case of “alright”‘s wordhood.

First let me remark upon your contention that “To write already, also, always, although as single words, and spell alright as two, would be inconsistent, a rule breaker.” Sorry, Dr, Goodword, but that ship has already sailed. English contains myriad inconsistencies and shows no sign of getting rid of them anytime soon. Rather the opposite, I would think. Do you want to embark on a campaign of eliminating every inconsistency in the language? Perhaps you’d like to start with spelling?

If your position is to right the wrongs that you can, why pick “alright”? Isn’t it more important (for instance) to teach people that spell checkers are not the way to make your writing perfect?

And what about all the other adverbs that tragically haven’t yet been paired with “all”? I look forward to your endorsement of “alfair”, “algood”, “algreat”, “alswell”, and “altickety-boo”. In fact, it seems that the vast majority of adverbs have NOT been suffixed to “all”, so if you’re interested in consistency, perhaps you should campaign to pluck the “al” off of “already”, “also”, “always”, and, yes, “alright”.

Moving on, you say that “alright” is used today to mean “OK”, not “all is right”, and therefore somehow this means it’s OK to use the “word” “alright”.

I found your Beatles example amusing, where you say “In A Hard Day s Night the Beatles sing, But when I get home to you/ I find the things that you do/ Will make me feel alright. Doesn t this strike you a bit odd, John Lennon comes home to someone who only makes him feel OK? Here the phrase all right makes more sense.”

Actually, if you listen a little longer, you hear this phrase:

“So why on earth should I moan/ ’cause when I get you alone/ You know I feel okay”

Clearly “alright” and “okay” are synonymous here.

But did John Lennon say “alright”, or “all right”? The various lyric sites I checked all show the usage “alright”, but the Wikipedia entry on the song has evidence that Lennon intended to use the words “all right” in the final version of the song. If so, then this example actually shows that “all right” means “okay”! And if so, your contention that “all right” and “alright” have different meanings is false, and your conclusion that “alright” is okay to use synonymously with “OK” is not supported.

To be honest, I can’t provide any logically compelling reasons to not use “alright”. It just seems wrong to me, perhaps because I spent some of my formative years in England. And perhaps because it looks like it should sound like “AYL-rit”.

Thanks for reading,

Doug