Editorial: Stop Freaking Out About 'Alot'
Welcome to another Friday editorial, fellow grammarians! This week we're going to take a look at James Harbeck's article Hey, grammar nerds! Stop freaking out about 'alot.' from July 17, 2014.
In his article, Harbeck says that, while incorrect, we should just accept the fact that people are going to misspell a lot as alot. The precedents for this he cites include the usage of ahold (a century-plus of usage) and awhile (the better part of a millenium of usage), both of which have been around far longer than alot, which apparently had an uprise in usage back in the 1970s. He also takes into account the various ways that a can be used as a prefix, which may have attributed to the rise of alot.
To be completely honest, I hadn't really thought about the different prefix uses of a, so was able to relearn something that I buried in the back of my mind at some point. I do like how Harbeck encourages us to resist this colloquial inaccuracy and stick to our guns, while still admonishing that we get used to seeing it a lot more.
After his explanation of the a prefix uses, I particularly enjoyed his example of word formation: "Always remember: if historical word formation is an assembly line, Lucille Ball is working on it." I'll likely not forget that analogy, as the whole candy truffles episode popped into my head immediately.
But comedienne aside, I really like that Harbeck really gets into a nice descripton of how we likely came to have alot in our vocabulary. It made sense in how it came to be, even as I shuddered and my fingers twitched with the need to correct the word every time I read it in the article. For the record, Harbeck uses alot twenty-three times, including the title of the article, as opposed to using a lot only six times. I can only imagine how hard it must have been to deal with that, both in writing and editing the article.
So the gist of the article boils down to this: Correct whenever you need to, but don't be surprised if you do it a lot because apparently alot is here to stay.
In his article, Harbeck says that, while incorrect, we should just accept the fact that people are going to misspell a lot as alot. The precedents for this he cites include the usage of ahold (a century-plus of usage) and awhile (the better part of a millenium of usage), both of which have been around far longer than alot, which apparently had an uprise in usage back in the 1970s. He also takes into account the various ways that a can be used as a prefix, which may have attributed to the rise of alot.
To be completely honest, I hadn't really thought about the different prefix uses of a, so was able to relearn something that I buried in the back of my mind at some point. I do like how Harbeck encourages us to resist this colloquial inaccuracy and stick to our guns, while still admonishing that we get used to seeing it a lot more.
After his explanation of the a prefix uses, I particularly enjoyed his example of word formation: "Always remember: if historical word formation is an assembly line, Lucille Ball is working on it." I'll likely not forget that analogy, as the whole candy truffles episode popped into my head immediately.
But comedienne aside, I really like that Harbeck really gets into a nice descripton of how we likely came to have alot in our vocabulary. It made sense in how it came to be, even as I shuddered and my fingers twitched with the need to correct the word every time I read it in the article. For the record, Harbeck uses alot twenty-three times, including the title of the article, as opposed to using a lot only six times. I can only imagine how hard it must have been to deal with that, both in writing and editing the article.
So the gist of the article boils down to this: Correct whenever you need to, but don't be surprised if you do it a lot because apparently alot is here to stay.