eric paynter

On Fri, July 30, 2004 8:38 am, GBloomberg said:

This is not meant as a personal attack on GBloomberg, but merely a peeve
of mine that occurs *a lot* lately, as a result of the blind use of spell
checkers. The result is a deterioration of the English language that can
lead to confusion about what the author intended. (ok, in this case, it's
fairly clear, but it isn't always clear what the person intended when the
spell checker gets the best of them)

"a lot" means very many or very often (very often is just very many
occurrences, so it really just means very many).

"allot" means to divvy up and hand out (as in allotment).

"A lot" is often abbreviated to "alot", which does not exist in most spell
checkers, or in any dictionary that I have found. The result is that when
a spell checker sees "alot", it suggests "allot". Often, the user blindly
accepts.

The spell checker is a tool. It doesn't know what you mean. And if you
blindly accept what it suggests, then it may change the meaning of your
sentence. Be careful what you let you computer say for you!

If you're not sure which word or phrase is best suited for your meaning,
google can define it for you. Try things like "define: allot" and "define:
a lot" in the google search bar.

-Eric


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