Make Your Editor Cry: A Lot vs. Alot vs. Allot
Would you ever write the word “alittle” if your feelings were slightly hurt? Or would you use the article A and the word Little as in your feelings were a little hurt?
While this is pretty clear, if your feelings got hurt a lot or you see a lot of soldiers milling around, for whatever reason there seems to be an inclination to eliminate the space between the article and the word to say feelings got hurt alot or there were alot of soldiers.
You don’t see the correct use of this phrase a lot (see what I did there?) in print because a lot of writers (did it again!) use other expressions like “often,” “many,” “a great deal,” and so on.
The correct word combination is the article “a” and the word “lot” separated by a space as in: a lot.
The word alot isn’t a thing, or, you know, a word.
Gregg Bridgeman is the Editor-in-Chief at Olivia Kimbrell Press. He is husband to best-selling Christian author Hallee Bridgeman and parent to three. He continues to proudly serve in the US Armed Forces and has done so in either an active or reserve capacity for more than twenty years as an airborne and air assault qualified paratrooper, earning a Bronze Star for his service. Most importantly, he was ordained in October of 2001 after surrendering his life to Christ decades earlier.