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 😁

Just to clarify, as that could be misconstrued! .. I write 'alot' alot.

And now I know it annoys some people so much they start a whole thread about it, the rebel on me wants tow

Oh my goodness what is my flippin Mumsnet account doing today!! Keeps posting before I've finishes!! Grrr...

And now I know it (writing 'alot') annoys some people so much they start a whole thread about it, the rebel on me wants to write it more! A bit like defying that incredibly annoying teacher's pet at school (I bet you were her OP!)

I can write what I want, how I want, as long as it's not inherently offensive.

Yes, autocorrect does do some stupid things - turning 'ill' into 'I'll' , putting an apostrophe into a possessive "its", capitalising normal words if they happen to also be used as proper nouns in other contexts. But it doesn't turn 'a lot' into 'alot' because the latter isn't a word and won't be in its dictionary.

I always thought alot = a large amount

whereas a lot = a piece of land or garage space

I have been wrong for a very long time it seems.

If people think "alot" is a word, do they also think there's such a word as "thelot"?

And don't me started on "should/would of". It's like nails down a blackboard to me and I find myself indwardly screaming "if you think "of" is a verb, let's hear you conjugate it". "Needs gone" and similar is starting to have a similar effect on me.

Being a pedant is such a pain in the arse. I blame it on the fact that for years my job was vetting and correcting reports.

A piece of land can be an allotment, of course.

I'm a great speller (one of the few skills I have in life!) but I confess I use "alot" I've seen it used in books etc. I'm from Yorkshire!

I just searched out this thread as I've come across a particularly heinous spelling.

Allot.

How. How does someone think that is the spelling?

This was my secondary school English teacher's personal bugbear. So I never write alot because he went on about it so much!

Both alot and a lot look wrong to me now so I let autocorrect decide for me. It likes both apparently 😑

The one I've noticed on a lot of reality "stars" is confusing 'genuinely' with 'generally'. They tend to want to use the word genuinely a lot (alot!) to underline their feelings.

But they say generally instead, more often than not.
e.g.
"I generally thought I had a connection with you...."
"I generally wished you hadn't done that...."

It"s not down to accent. They mean 'genuinely', but really think the word is 'generally' possibly because they have heard it rather than read it as a word.

It's the same for the 'should of' - people have heard 'should've', but haven't had much exposure to the written word 'should've', or 'should have', so they are writing 'should've/should have' almost phonetically as 'should of'.

'Allot' is the correct spelling of the word 'allot', which is a verb.