Grammatical "error"

Yesterday, I finished editing one of my favorite pieces, Coetir: The People of the Wood. While doing so, I came across something interesting (and fairly short) that I thought might interest you.

All right/Alright.

You see, one of these is proper, and the other one isn't. I'm sure you all know which way it goes. All right is the proper way to say it, and alright is the way that everyone pronounces it and most people use it.

Well.

That being the case, I have a very simple rule when it comes to my writing (one that you might notice, if you read any of my work).

Whenever I'm writing in exposition, I use the expository form.

Therefore, a sentence would look like this:

Everything was going to be all right. 

But when I'm writing in dialogue, because it's the way people pronounce the word, I use the nonstandard version:

"Everything's going to be alright," she said.

See the difference?

When I had Telekinetic professionally edited, they took out this feature. Mind you, most editors will. However, I'm not one of those. I believe in maintaining the differences between exposition and dialogue, because, really, they're two very different things.


What do you think? Can you think of any other words where something like this becomes appropriate?

{RD}