“Alot”

[TheClanoftheDook]

Appreciate I’ll be called all the arseholes for this one. But I am actually interested.

I see this constantly. On here. In real life. On another thread, there is an apparent “commercial lawyer” using it.

Why? Where does it come from? How are people looking at “alot” and thinking it’s a word? Aren’t you having to fight the autocorrect to use it? I did. It autocorrected my title more than once.

So. If you use “alot” - why?

What, like this?

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/sloth

Dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive, anyway.

I suspect your grandchild probably had a far better start in life than a lot of other children. It's pretty hard to engage at school and remember things when you have a tough beginning. Nearly a third of children in the UK are growing up in poverty. What do you think is priority for them at school? Survival? Worrying about their parents? Wondering why Dad left? Coping with a community rife with drugs and antisocial behaviour? Learning to spell?

Once you get past childhood do you think you automatically learn things you missed at school or does life continue to kick you in the arse as you grew up in poverty?

I suggest a lot of posters look into studying social mobility. Classing people as lazy or stupid is such a black and white way of looking at something that is so, so embedded in society and so complex.

Annoys me no end. My mum is terrible for doing it, both alot and abit. I told her it was wrong and she was genuinely surprised, despite being very well read. When I pointed out she'd never seen it used in a book, she said it was text speak and therefore acceptable. Same as using 'tmrw' when letters are no longer restricted in any way!

I would rather have atrocious spelling than be as judgmental as lots on this thread. My child has terrible spelling and punctuation and I can assure you that no amount of education, reading, spellcheckers or otherwise help them spot every or even most mistakes. But it’s nice to know that they’re going to be labeled as thick, stupid, lazy and all the other charming labels on this thread 🤬

I've seen the most worst spelling and grammer mistakes on the internet alot! recently. Its' asif people download these in correct terms. They start separating words and joining otherwords to gether. Are they literate? Am I a s'nob? Don't no but it really grinds my gear's I'll tellya!

Was this the story about the A lot? Sort of a mythical beast that types and is really quite loveable?

I’m a teacher and read the blog like reading a story to my class. They love it and I don’t have to correct ‘alot’ in their work. It’s a great blog.

Also cue.

Que, queue and cue are used interchangeably on MN.

"I have went..."

It instantly makes me think the person writing it is not very clever, no matter what else they've said. I can't bear it.

I was surprised not to see a link to Hyperbole and a Half's post about 'Alot', but I assume that's the one that keeps getting hidden?

Yes, like that.

The whole issue of prescriptive vs descriptive is pretty knotty. Yes, dictionaries are descriptive to a point and will list changes when they are widespread and "accepted" enough (and of course deciding when that moment has arrived is a tricky one for lexicographers). But they do not describe all common usage; otherwise, they would list "alot" as an option, which they don't, not even the Cambridge ;) (It's just listed as a common misspelling.)

We very much use them as an authority as well, which you yourself have just done, which suggests prescription rather than description.

It would also be completely impractical to go just with description. Taken to its logical conclusion, that would mean that anything could be used in any way or with any meaning, which is completely impractical for communication purposes.

There's also the issue of some dictionaries carrying more authority than others. Amongst the professional linguists I know, the OED is rated much more highly than other dictionaries.

One thing doesn't seem to change though: language use and language change are very emotionally charged subjects.

Would the phonetic dictionary description refer to someone with a RP accent? It may be the "correct" pronunciation but due to regional variations, not everyone is going to say it the same.

However as I've found out on here, regional variations do not exist - you are mispronouncing the word 🙄

And vice versa with those two!

We seen/we done - I've heard this from supposedly educated people.

It happens ahuge amount. It’s very annoying.

Me and DP did XYZ. Teeth-grinding fodder.

What an absolutely bleeding heart response. And a response that shows how very very wrong it is to make assumptions about other posters' circumstances when you know nothing about them.

You couldn't be further from the truth as regards my granddaughter. School( and I) were her saviours. Due to the very unfortunate life choices and behaviours of her parents which were incompatible with caring properly for a child, she was removed from their care and came to live with me.
So she has had very many issues to deal with, yet still managed to be able to learn how to spell properly.

There’s also the use of too instead of to. Mostly where it occurs at the end of a sentence such as “if I didn’t have too” or “but he didn’t mean too”. Weird. And wrong.

No, I specifically asked you "Says who?" and it was you who made the appeal to the "authority" of the dictionary. So, even by your own standards you are wrong about the pronunciation of sloth. I note you haven't corrected your error.

It's pretty obvious that standardisation for written English will endure longer than for spoken English. "Alot" is wrong for now, but might not be in 50 years' time.

It's not a bleeding heart response. It's the reality for tens of thousands of kids. I'm sorry your granddaughter had a tough start. Just because she learnt to spell despite her challenges can you seriously not see how other kids have so much going on that spelling just doesn't even factor in their life. Your granddaughter had you and probably had someone (you?) in her life that cared about education. Huge numbers of children don't have that. Try to see that and be a bit more open minded.

May I be so bold as to bring up the everyday horror on MN of "brake" vs "break" in every motoring thread ever? Can't blame that one on autocorrect.

You talk about social mobility but the way you write shows that you've already written off the futures of the very children you're talking about. You're saying that because of difficult lives they're never going to learn anything at school because they're spending their whole school day worrying about their home life.

That is absolute rubbish.

Schools and teachers have done, can and do make a tremendous difference to the lives and futures of children with difficult backgrounds. They show them that life can be different, books can open up new worlds, you don't have to be condemned to the same life as your parents, that education can give you choices to make a better life for yourself, that hard work at school gives you long term rewards. Good schools and teachers can open doors for children.

The spellings we are talking about here are not difficult, it's not hard to write "a lot" instead of "alot". That's why it can be taught and learned at primary school.

Slightly off topic, but I have seen an item of furniture described as "Chester Draws" both on here and on FB.

It took my brain a couple of seconds to compute the first time I saw it.

I absolutely have not written off any children. There is a huge difference between knowing that there are 1001 reasons why children are blocked from learning than those posters dismissing people as stupid and lazy for not being able to spell certain words.

Let's remember that schools have a 'one size fits all' approach to education. Yet we all learn in different ways. I'm sure many of us can recall being told how to do something but not getting the hang of it until someone else explains it in a different way. A way that suits the way we personally learn.