Alot.

[Ottika]

People writing 'alot' instead of 'a lot'.

What's going on with this? I noticed it years ago, often on Reddit for some reason, but it appears to have become much more common. I think it is a young thing, in that older communities tend not to do it? I have also observed it more often in communities that are mostly male.
I could definitely be wrong, though!

Not approaching this as a pedant exactly, but I am curious as to why it is so common now. Are reading and spelling skills deteriorating, changing, or a kind of.....defiance??
I find it difficult to relate to because I would presume most people who have had even very basic schooling would know that they are two separate words.

Or could it be that phone and device software isn't suggesting a correction?
I do wonder how much software has an impact on this kind of thing in general.

I didn't know that, that's bizarre!

But how does it happen?
Is this a common deviation, in that words have always been rearranged and changed throughout history (we know some obviously have!)? or does this signify something entirely new?

The 'youth' changing old traditions and spellings must be a common thread over time.

Or could it be something unprecedented, a push to demote 'education'? Wanted to edit my post to explain what I mean here. I am thinking that algorithms learn from 'the most common' behaviour, as the google AI will deliver answers that have previously been asked the most, etc. Even if those are badly spelled and illogical (WHat IS TOP10 tips FOR cancer?), they will apppear at the top of a search before a scientific, factual answer.

Do you think algorithms will be the new learning tools, so the most common beliefs will float to the top, regardless their validity? I too am a bit nervous of this, as it allows the shit to float to the top.

Ideas off the top of my head here of course. This kind of thing truly fascinates me.

There is a lot more (rapid, electronic) written communication than there used to be ten or twenty years ago. It used to be the case that so many people hardly ever had to write a thing after they left school. Plus the internet is global and many people don't have English as a first language.

I'm a lawyer and a writer and I make mistakes. I often wondered if "alot" was a word probably ten or twenty years ago when I first saw it "alot" online.

Have to say since I turned 45 I often forget or start getting things wrong that I knew when I was six. I have found myself writing all sorts of crap - the wrong kind of their/there/they're. And I realised two years ago that why I made typos on my phone was that my sight was deteriorating and now I have glasses for reading and screen use.

And I'm still learning English grammar at 49 years old. There is "a lot" to learn. I learned the other day on here that you don't need "why" after "hence". I can't imagine how many times I've written "hence why" over the years.

I work with a lot of very clever engineers who can't write for toffee. But I can't do the things they do or know the things they know.

State education has always failed a certain number of people.

There are quite a few adults who can't read.

My English teacher claimed to have a dictionary at school that had alot in it solely to highlight that it was incorrect. If not, he made this up when he "copied" it onto the board:

alot: Common misspelling of a lot.