Roswell Fanatics

Drogyn wrote:

Breathless wrote:I've wondered the same thing about 'all right" vs 'alright'. It sounds like alright has become acceptable except to the traditionalists. To me, alright sounds more like a physical condition: "I feel alright", and all right sounds more adverbish (?), as in "All right, where did I put my keys."

that's my 2 cents!

Actually, I believe it's exactly the opposite.
Alright is officially not a word. It can be replaced by something in the line of 'ok' like "Alright, let's get out of here"
All right means that everything is right. To quote Herbal from Dark Angel: "It is all right, all the time".
So if you can't replace all right/alright by a simple adverb (such as 'ok') it is spelled 'all right'.
Of course, I could be wrong...

Breathless wrote:
Wow, that's interesting. I wonder how long it will be before "alright" becomes an official word?

Just poppin' in because what Debbi said made me think of something, and I got a giggle.

I had a fantabulous English teacher the last two years of high school. I took AP English 11 and College English by the same teacher, and she was always stressing about how all of the incorrect grammar uses will one day become the correct usage. And it just amazed me.

She actually used "alright" as one of her examples, and also "thru" (as in drive-thru) and "rite" (as in rite aid). Because these are so common now, she says that eventually those spellings will be correct.

She also said it's because people are too lazy to use the right forms, but...whatever. -lol-

Anywho, I don't know if someone has said that or not, as I haven't read through all of the threads, but...Just sharing.

Raychel

This may be the most universal word in existence; it seems to have spread to most of the world’s languages. Etymologists now generally agree that it began as a humorous misspelling of “all correct": “oll korrect.” “OK” without periods is the most common form in written American English now, though “okay” is not incorrect.

Colons have a host of uses, but they mostly have in common that the colon acts to connect what precedes it with what follows. Think of the two dots of a colon as if they were stretched out to form an equal sign, so that you get cases like this: “he provided all the ingredients: sugar, flour, butter, and vanilla.” There are a few exceptions to this pattern, however. One unusual use of colons is in between the chapter and verses of a Biblical citation, for instance, “Matthew 6:5.” In bibliographic citation a colon separates the city from the publisher: “New York: New Directions, 1979.” It also separates minutes from hours in times of day when given in figures: “8:35.”

It is incorrect to substitute a semicolon in any of these cases. Think of the semicolon as erecting a little barrier with that dug-in comma under the dot; semicolons always imply separation rather than connection. A sentence made up of two distinct parts whose separation needs to be emphasized may do so with a semicolon: “Mary moved to Seattle; she was sick of getting sunburned in Los Angeles.” When a compound sentence contains commas within one or more of its clauses, you have to escalate to a semicolon to separate the clauses themselves: “It was a mild, deliciously warm spring day; and Mary decided to walk to the fair.” The other main use of semicolons is to separate one series of items from another—a series within a series, if you will: “The issues discussed by the board of directors were many: the loud, acrimonious complaints of the stockholders; the abrupt, devastating departure of the director; and the startling, humiliating discovery that he had absconded with half the company’s assets.” Any time the phrases which make up a series contain commas, for whatever reason, they need to be separated by semicolons.

Many people are so terrified of making the wrong choice that they try to avoid colons and semicolons altogether, but I’m afraid this just can’t be done. Formal writing requires their use, and it’s necessary to learn the correct patterns.

Use then to show sequence, what happens next. Other meanings include "at that time" and "as a necessary consequence"
Examples:
- The whole family had a leisurely breakfast. We then went outside to enjoy the beautiful weather.
- He was just a little child then.
- If she is going to write another novel, then she should find another editor.
Use than to compare things.
Example: The dinosaur bones were older than anything I had ever seen before.

Shiesty23 wrote:

pooklette wrote:I have sort of a left-field question for you guys...

I'm writing a fic where Rath is one of the characters and I'm trying to duplicate his horrible accent and slang. In my fic, he never refers to women by their first names, but by various obnoxious nicknames. When you're referring to a woman as 'a chick' how exactly do you spell 'chick' in that context. Everytime I type 'chick' I feel like it looks wrong...like I'm referring to a chicken. Is it chick, chic, or what?

Thanks! :)

The slang spelling of it is: Chic