This is driving me NUTS!!!!

Crystalina wrote: OK, is it 'alot' or 'a lot'?

My Firefox keeps giving me a red line for 'alot' but doesn't 'a lot' mean a different 'lot'?

grapfruit replied: I just looked it up on M-W Online dictonary and I think it's a lot.

Crystalina replied:
Apparently it is. I've gotten it wrong all these years then. I never knew...learn something new everyday.

TheOaf66 replied: it is a lot, I had a teacher in high school who had me looking in different books to try and find the word alot to which there was not one so that is how I learned.

Crystalina replied:
I had a teacher once that made me do a 3 page report on the word 'peril' because I asked what it meant! I hate that word now and will never forget it's meaning.

MommyToAshley replied: I think I always say alot as well. But, then, I rely way too much on spell check. If I don't know how to spell something, I usually just try to get close and think... oh well, spell check will catch it.

And, as you probably already know, I don't usually spell check my posts on here.

Calimama replied: We spent a week over this in high school, it's A LOT.

Kaitlin'smom replied: I check in word ant it auto corrected to a lot.....never noticed it before

lisar replied: I have always done it alot and probably still will. LOL... Its habbit at this point.

Our Lil' Family replied: I had an English teacher in High School tell me that it was not a grammatically correct word at all. She always said "a lot is what you build a house on...use another word". To this day I try not to use it but think about that wonderful teacher each time I do.

Crystalina replied:
That's the way I look at it also. A lot is an item or to describe something in bulk to me. I guess the way I use it is also describing something in bulk, 'alot', but not really something physical I guess.

luvmykids replied:
Same here

My2Beauties replied: Yeah it is a lot, but I'm sooo guilty of saying alot and this is coming from a spelling freak, there are very few words I don't know how to spell and it drives me crazy to see commonly misspelled words....not that alot isn't really being spelled wrong, it's just now seperated with the space!

luvmykids replied:
My teacher explained it this way....we say "lots", as in "kids get lots of presents this time of year" or "I've done that lots of times" and although it isn't the MOST grammatically correct way of quantifying, it has become an acceptable way to do so, therefore "a lot" has become a way of implying a great amount.