Okay, after skimming through a grammar pet peeve thread on another forum, I was surprised to see that grammar nazis really frown upon the use of 'alright', as opposed to all right. I've personally always used the former because I thought it 'looked' better, mostly because of stress related reasons, but I had never even heard of any controversy going on. Though apparently there seems to be one regardless, according to dictionary.com:
Quote:
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Usage Note: Despite the appearance of the form alright in works of such well-known writers as Langston Hughes and James Joyce, the single word spelling has never been accepted as standard. This is peculiar, since similar fusions such as already and altogether have never raised any objections. The difference may lie in the fact that already and altogether became single words back in the Middle Ages, whereas alright has only been around for a little more than a century and was called out by language critics as a misspelling. Consequently, one who uses alright, especially in formal writing, runs the risk that readers may view it as an error or as the willful breaking of convention.
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So is this a controversy that is really widely known among English native speakers, and is the usage of 'alright' really that much worse and more informal than 'all right'? Which one do you personally prefer?