Let’s discuss pet peeves. Everyone has them. Especially when it comes to grammar points. Don’t believe me? Ask loved ones in your life what errors drive them up the wall. Some people hate split infinitives. Others can’t stand the confusion between their/there/they’re. For a rare curmudgeonly few, it’s ending a sentence with a preposition. 

For me, it’s “alot.”

I don’t understand. Alot isn’t a thing. Maybe it’s a name. I don’t know. I’m not worldly. All I know is that this particular spelling error drives me bonkers. I don’t know why. No one said pet peeves have to be rational. I sort of glaze over other spelling errors or smile bemused at a mixup between fairy and ferry (no Kait, I’ll never forget). Most don’t produce much emotion other than, perhaps, a slight tinge of resignation as I correct them. 

But if you want me frothing at the mouth with rage, you can simply smush these two little words together. 

I’m not even sure how this error propagated so much. You never come across abit. Do people often see alittle? Maybe English speaker’s minds can handle that small amounts should be in separate piles. But once you get into big mounds then it all sort of collapses together into a whole. Or awhole, in this case.  Or apile. Or even amass. 

At any rate, this is less a writing tip post and more a recommendation. It’s “a lot.”Just put a space in there. I swear, it’s not a problem. Your auto-correct should catch it anyway. And if it’s not, then you’ve been typing on your phone with predictive text turned on too much. While this won’t have a huge impact on the quality of your writing, it will still be a nice change if even one person breaks from this habit.

Because you never know if I’m going to be the curmudgeon who ends up editing your work.