After watching the recent South Park episode on the revised use of the word "faggot", I was reminded of how alive language is, and how neologisms and alteration of meaning can take place in a relatively short time frame. This got me thinking about the phrase "all right", which my uncle is always keen on reminding me is the accepted grammatically correct spelling. I admit that in formal writing, one should use the two word phrase. However, I do see a reason why the less common (but becoming more so) word "alright" should be adopted as a "real" word in its own right. And keep in mind that unlike most other languages of the world, English has no national or international academy or regulatory body that determines worthiness or correctness of words; there is only a loose confederation of dictionary publishers and a collection of traditionalists. Not one legal policy or official statute exists concerning purity of English (a far cry from French and Mandarin, whose language elite are, to put it bluntly, xenophobic and parochial).

The need for "alright" arises in the following context:

Here, there is some ambiguity over whether the speaker means that the answers were collectively correct (i.e., none of them were wrong), or that the solutions were satisfactory or mediocre. The difference can be ascribed to the fact that, in the former case, the two word phrase may be broken up: "All of your answers to the problems were right." In the latter case, "alright" should be used to imply that the answers were acceptable, though perhaps did not meet higher expectations, and cannot be recast as a split phrase. I feel that this difference, as well as the growing usage of the word in informal writing and dialogue, necessitates the acceptance of "alright" as a legitimate English word in the near future, if not already.