Man, even the title looks wrong to me. I'm going to blame my generation (and possibly gen X as well) for this one.
I was writing fanfiction when I had a revelation. So you can have words like 'all together' that, when put together, mean something entirely different. Like 'altogether' is different to 'all together'. but 'alright' and 'all right' don't seem to have different definitions. I ended up Google-ing it (mum tried to help but in the end we both had to use the internet) and discovered that alright is not actually a word.
Personally I think it is a word. I use 'all right' if someone were asking if you were okay. i.e. "Are you all right?". However, I'd use 'alright' if it were just a reply, like a synonym to 'sure'.
i.e. "Want to go see a movie?"
"Yeah, alright."
In other contexts, I kind of vary between the two. But as a general rule, I use 'alright' more often. It looks more casual and perhaps natural than 'all right' does. I'm not sure why. I use it as a contraction, I guess. In the same way as I use 'don't' instead of 'do not'. 'Alright' doesn't appear to be as formal as 'all right' and therefore, I prefer using it in fanfiction and normal online conversation. Is this the wrong thing to do? Apparently so.
Ah well, English is an evolving language, so I suppose it's only a matter of time before 'alright' makes it into our major dictionaries.
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