A question for people who write 'alot'

[Devilledmeg]

Do you think 'alot' is how you're meant to spell it and whenever you see 'a lot' you think it's spelt wrong? Or do you know it's incorrect and just prefer to spell it like that?

Genuinely baffled as whenever I see words on here repeatedly spelt differently I look it up to check I haven't spelt it incorrectly all my life 😁

This was the first thing I thought about when reading the title.

I would imagine it’s because words start with a like along, among, about etc.

It's a bit like me when I see people who can't punctuate sentences correctly.
Perhaps you could explain?

@Pumperthepumper 's sentence was correct.
Yours, however...

Thank god someone said it! This makes me so mad! 😂

The obvious misunderstanding of my point has to be deliberate?

No wonder folk cba with spag pedants

Wow, they are absolutely not 'regional things'. They're just right/wrong.

@LindaEllen

Yes.

They are right /wrong

But that doesn't mean they're not also regionally more likely to be used rightly or wrongly.

OP have you heard of autocorrect?

I type quickly and often the autocorrect gets it incorrect. This is social media and I don’t feel the need to proofread in case some judgy pedant comes along.

No those are completely different words with completely different meanings for completely different things are they not.
Sorry couldn’t resist putting my ha’porth in somewhere because I write a lot too.

They are the same people who write 'aswell' rather than 'as well'. Given that schooling is supposed to be better than it was, and there is allegedly more help for dyslexia, I am surprised to see this appear so often.

Is it a regional thing like brought/bought draw/drawer?

Baffling. Brought and bought are two verbs, meaning different things. Draw has many uses as a verb, but is sometimes a noun. Drawer is always a noun, never a verb. Four entirely different words and meanings

Chester draws seems to have caught on and become "a thing" now 🤦🏻‍♀️ as does people saying they went to the shops and "brought" bla bla bla.

@AndTwoFilmsByFrancoisTruffaut

Baffling that you are incapable of understanding the clear point being made

Same! I can get generally spot a typo a mile off but this one was my blind spot. Same with dissatisfied, I was spelling it dis-satisfied until someone pointed out there was no need for the hyphen (I’m still not 100% convinced they were right though!)

If your autocorrect changes 'a lot' into 'alot', it must be that you've (accidentally, I assume) trained it to do so.

Writing 'wanna' or 'gonna' is a bit different because they're representations of casual pronunciation, whereas 'alot' doesn't sound any different to 'a lot'.

Apart from sounding the same, I suppose there may be some confusion with the word 'allot', although obviously that has a different meaning (related to the auction or plot meaning of 'lot' I suppose )

@PAFMO their sentence was not correct. Do you don’t care doesn’t make sense, and never will. It should be do you NOT care.

It’s very exciting that my phone did a silly autocorrect and changed NOT CARE to NOT A ARE, but the initial point still stands.

It’s not, rather than don’t in that instance.

@ErrolTheDragon

No that is not the reason. I’m on an iPhone that also uses predictive text. Whenever I type “well” at the start of a sentence it unhelpfully changes it to “we’ll”. sometimes I can’t be bothered to change it. This is MN not a job application.

The fact several people on this thread can’t imagine not everyone is bothered to proofread, and assumes any spelling or grammatical error is due to dyslexia or poor schooling is frankly obnoxious and says a lot more about them than the person writing it.

It's likely that many are typing on a phone or tablet, the space bar doesn't always work and they're not noticing before they post. Same as with autocorrect. I've done it before and some devices seem more prone to this.

I'm a descriptivist when it comes to language and don't like self-satisfied the sneering at other people's errors that one sees a lot on here, even if I wouldn't ever use 'alot' (et al) myself. There are a couple of things I've noticed increasingly happening that irk me despite myself, though. One is the transformation of 'in to' into 'into' (!), specifically in a phrase like 'give in to someone' (i.e. do what they want to stop them kicking off). I see that very often as 'give into' on here - 'if you give into him this time, he'll do it again'. It does sort of change the meaning.

Then there's the creep of 'decline'. AIUI you use 'decline' when you are saying no to something you are being invited to do, and 'refuse' when saying no to something you are being asked/told to do. I'm increasingly seeing 'decline' for both meanings. 'She expected me to look after her children all weekend and got angry when I declined.'

*the self-satisfied sneering. Sigh.

I think you need to getoutmore

Every time I go past the pound shop with the 'Great prices everyday' sign, I am tempted to tell them that it should be 'every day', as opposed to 'everyday prices'.
Then I cross the road which has: 'Look bothways'.
On social media I often see 'use', meaning 'yous', for 'you'.

I do it alot! 👍😀