• Alot

    Full definition of alot

    Adverb

    alot

    1. informal
      misspelled version of a lot

    Noun

    alot

    (uncountable)
    1. Misspelling of a lot

    Usage notes

    This spelling of ‘a lot’ (in the adverbial senses of "very much or many" and "often") is frequent in informal writing but not generally accepted by arbiters of English usage. Others view it as a legitimate . Some occurrences of alot in print may be s.

    1993, The Columbia Guide to Standard American English calls alot “substandard” and notes that it is “increasingly found in Informal correspondence and student writing” and “has as yet received no sanction in print except on the op-ed and sports pages.” http://www.bartleby.com/68/4/304.html http://books.google.com/books?id=L2ChiO2yEZ0C&q=alot

    1996, The American Heritage Book of English Usage states that “alot is still considered an error in print” but notes that standard words have formed by fusion of the article with a noun, such as another and awhile, and suggests the possibility that alot may, like them, eventually enter standard usage. http://www.bartleby.com/64/C003/0200.html

    2004, Jack Lynch Guide to Grammar and Style (entry dated 2004) flatly states this to be a two-word expression. http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing/a.html#alot

    2004, The Cambridge Guide to English Usage also compares alot to awhile. It states alot to be “still regarded as nonstandard” and notes 50 appearances in the British National Corpus, “almost entirely from three sources: e-mail, TV autocue data, and TV newscripts.” It suggests that some usages of alot in typewritten use are to be considered merely typos of the standard a lot though its appearance in handwriting and typescript is “more significant, as the shadow of things to come.” http://print.google.com/print?id=UA5syoe1kc0C&pg=PA30&lpg=PA30&sig=rtyA7J19FLKXuJ-65S78fDEnON8

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