It’s all right if you don’t know this rule

Due in part to the crippling loneliness that’s plagued me ever since

I became a “freelance” writer, I’m now a member of two writing

groups.

One is a fiction-writing group spawned of a UCLA Extension writing

class. The other is a screenwriting group spawned of the Internet.

The first is mostly women, the second is mostly men.

The first gives gentle, nurturing, positive reinforcement. The

second refers to the critiquing process as “hammer time.”

The first consists of people who might, maybe, someday submit

something to a publication or fiction contest or maybe even someday

finish that novel. The second is made up of people who in their minds

are already writing dialogue to be spoken by A-list actors.

The first group consists of people who issue disclaimers such as,

“This thing I wrote really stinks and I was really tired and we don’t

have to read it at all if you guys don’t want to.” The second

consists of people who would happily corner Martin Scorsese at a

Starbucks to ask him to read their script.

The first group is, I suspect, made up mostly of middle children

who, like me, wore an older sibling’s hand-me-downs while changing a

younger sibling’s diaper. The latter group, I suspect, is made up of

either oldest children like my endearingly demanding big sister,

younger children like my endearingly narcissistic little sister, or

only children, like the vast majority of the boyfriends I no longer

talk to.

Members of the first group know that I’d like to make my fiction

writing more meaningful. Members of the second group don’t know that

I don’t even really write screenplays (just lonely is all).

But, surprisingly, these two seemingly polar opposite groups are

made up of people who share a single universal trait. Pretty much all

of them think “alright” is a word. (OK, maybe not Maitreya and Lisa,

but I can’t let truth dilute my thesis.)

By the way, my friends are not alone in thinking that “alright” is

a word. The Who, the Rolling Stones, Lenny Kravitz and the Beastie

Boys all think so, too.

And there are lots more where they came from.

But when it comes to “alright,” these people are all wrong.

“Alright” simply ain’t (which, ironically, has a lot more credibility

than “alright”).

From the “Associated Press Stylebook”: “‘all right (adv.) Never

‘alright.’”

From the “Chicago Manual of Style”: “‘all right.’ Two words. Avoid

‘alright.’”

From “Lapsing Into a Comma: A Curmudgeon’s Guide To the Many

Things That Can Go Wrong in Print (and How to Avoid them)”: “‘all

right’ Not ‘alright.’”

From “Garner’s Modern American Usage”: “‘Alright for ‘all right’

has never been accepted as standard in AmE. Gertrude Stein used the

shorter form, but that is not much of a recommendation.’”

From Strunk and White’s “The Elements of Style”: “Properly written

as two words -- ‘all right.’”

From “Webster’s New World College Dictionary, fourth edition”:

“alright. disputed sp. of ‘all right.’”

Perhaps the kindest critique comes from my old “American Heritage

Dictionary”: “adv. Nonstandard. All right.”

The only thing more universal than the rule-writers’ opposition to

“alright” is everyone else’s certainty that “alright” is a word. In

other words, nobody except the authors of the above five excerpts has

a clue that “alright” is all wrong.

So, my advice to the people in my two writing groups as well as to

all of you: Feel free to spell it “alright” all you want, because the

people reading it won’t know any different.

And if it’s alright with your reader, it’s alright with me. Me, I

just hope that this column is alright with my friends in those

writing groups.

* JUNE CASAGRANDE is a freelance writer. She can be reached at

[email protected].