O.C. Writers

By DeAnna Cameron //

Many writers use alright or all right in their manuscripts without ever giving it a second thought, and why should they? Both versions convey the same meaning, and both have been in common use for decades.

So, are they equally acceptable?

Not exactly.

Most popular dictionaries, including Merriam-Webster, Dictionary.com, and Cambridge Dictionary, present all right as the primary spelling and alright as a non-standard or variant version, which is why so many professional editors and teachers lean toward the two-word version too.

If you’ve ever had your work edited by a professional, you may have already encountered this and wondered about the bias. I know I have, and my curiosity recently sent me down a research rabbit hole in search of an answer.

There are dozens of articles written about all right vs. alright that present various arguments, mostly in favor of all right, but the source I found most compelling wasn’t an article at all. It was the Google Books Ngram Viewer’s graph depicting how both versions have been used since the 1800s.

If you aren’t familiar with the Google Books Ngram Viewer, it’s a handy online tool that charts the frequency of words or terms in sources dating back to 1800 and sometimes beyond. It shows alright only began to be used with measurable frequency after 1900. All right, on the other hand, was already well in use by 1800, and its usage has always drastically outpaced its cousin. In a glance, you can see all right is the obvious leader in both breadth of use and longevity.

So, if you’re wavering on which to use, most experts clearly prefer all right, and you won’t go wrong using that spelling.

If you prefer alright and want to stick with it, that’s fine too. You won’t be breaking any English language rules, but you should probably communicate your style choice to any future editors so they don’t fix something you don’t want fixed.

DEANNA CAMERON is the founder and managing director of O.C. Writers. She’s also an award-winning hybrid author currently writing YA dark fantasy as D.D. Croix and an occasional copy editor who’s never met an Oxford comma she didn’t like. Learn more at www.DDCroix.com.