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In practice I find both spellings being used. From a logical point of view, "allright" (as in: "all's right — everything is fine") seems correct. However, I recall hearing that "alright" is the preferable variant.

Is there consensus over which to use? Do they possibly even mean something different?

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9 Answers 9

up vote 51 down vote accepted

Wiktionary marks alright as an "alternative spelling" of all right, and allright as a "common misspelling" thereof. Merriam-Webster only has entries for alright and all right, and this usage discussion:

The one-word spelling alright appeared some 75 years after all right itself had reappeared from a 400-year-long absence. Since the early 20th century some critics have insisted alright is wrong, but it has its defenders and its users. It is less frequent than all right but remains in common use especially in journalistic and business publications. It is quite common in fictional dialogue, and is used occasionally in other writing <the first two years of medical school were alright — Gertrude Stein>.

The stats from the Corpus of Contemporary American English and the British National Corpus look as follows:

            COCA   BNC

all right  59013   6384
alright     1888   8328
allright      36      3

This suggests that alright is much more popular in Britain than in the US. However, the Corpus of Historical American English paints the following picture:

Usage stats

X axis: year, Y axis: incidences per million words.

So, alright seems to be gaining popularity in the States as well.

Lastly, the fact that all right loses one L when written as one word is not peculiar in the least — just think of already, almost, although, albeit, almighty, altogether, and any number of other words formed this way.

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cf. This blowhard's prognostication –  Robusto Feb 17 '11 at 13:32

At Grammar School, in Britain, circa 1955, we were taught that the correct spelling was alright.

I have no objection to anyone spelling it all right, but for me alright it shall remain until my dying day.

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Thirty years later and half a world away, our dutifully bookcovered, California middlebrow, Houghton Mifflin textbooks opined just the opposite: "Alright is all wrong." –  choster Jan 28 at 22:20
@choster Since California is 120 degrees west of Greenwich, it was only a third of a world away. ;) –  tchrist Jan 28 at 22:35
@tchrist Since the school where I learned to spell alright is in the minor portion of the UK which is east of Greenwich, you need to add a further 1.297 degrees to your calculation. –  WS2 Jan 28 at 23:07

"All right" is the correct phrase according to almost all grammarians and as per correct usage.

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I was taught that "alright" was never correct. I don't see any problem with it in informal contexts, but I would avoid it elsewhere.

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The British Shorter Oxford Dictionary as of 1992 lists alright as

frequent sp. of all right 1893.

The Australian Macquarie Dictionary as of 1991 simply has

adj., adv., interj. → all right.

Personally I always use alright even though I'm aware some pedants might not approve.

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I'm my humble and uninformed opinion they are both correct, but are a little different.

I would use "alright" in a sentence such as: "Alright, I finished fixing the engine, now to test it.", or "alright, alright already, I'll fix the brakes." while I would say "The car's running all right, but it really needs a wash."

So, I would use "all right" when it really means all of it's right, while "alright" is used in more informal or derivative uses where it doesn't really mean all is right.

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To my (overly pedantic) mind, "all right" is the only correct spelling. The other abominations arose from the colloquial "alrighty," as an analog to "already," I suspect.

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So, how would you distinguish between Your homework is all right and Your homework is alright? –  TRiG Jun 22 '11 at 10:25
I would call the latter "completely wrong." But, like many things in English, it's completely acceptable these days. Language evolves. –  Fixee Jun 22 '11 at 15:26
I'd distinguish between all right, meaning completely correct, and alright, meaning "acceptable". –  TRiG Jun 22 '11 at 17:24
Makes sense in a way, but I think you're alone in making this distinction. In particular, it'd be hard to distinguish these when spoken (rather than written). –  Fixee Jun 22 '11 at 18:00

According to Collins Dictionary and Thesaurus (UK, 2nd ed. 2000):

alright is "a variant spelling of all right."
"USAGE NOTE The form alright, though very common, is still considered by many people to be wrong or less acceptable"

The entry for all right includes:
"all-right (US slang) acceptable; reliable."

allright doesn't even merit an entry.

So 'alright' is all right, but 'allright' is wrong, at least in my book.

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The second spelling requires a space: it is either “alright” or “all right”.

The New Oxford American Dictionary says:


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protected by tchrist Jul 1 '14 at 0:42


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