My English teacher assured me one night
That there was just no such word as “alright”:
Rather, it’s two words, spelled separately
As a—l—l r—i—g—h—t.
My dictionary, that faithful and true sage,
Tells me that “alright” is nonstandard usage.
Yet this bad spelling is sweeping the nation!
Who is responsible for its creation?
There’s also people almost everywhere
Who do not pronounce their words with much care.
Many I’ve heard switching exes and esses
Turning their speech into terrible messes.
In pronunciation there’s always clear risks
Especially with nuclear asterisks.
(Say that last line with care, and don’t play tricks,
For there is no such word as “astericks”,
And don’t say “nucular”, nor say “ex-specially”:
Saying that line right is kind of a test, you see.)
“Ax” me no questions, instead you should ask,
Why is pronouncing words right such a task?
The English language has so many schisms
That we have turned to colloquialisms:
Regional accents and strange foreign idioms
Make mispronouncing the pastime of witty bums.
Don’t get me started on abbreviations
Now used in chat rooms across many nations.
There’s a whole language built from the computer
That you must know every time that you boot ‘er.
Don’t get me wrong: there’s a time and a place
One should abbreviate when there’s no space,
But don’t assume every word thus invented
Will allow grammar to be circumvented.
The difference between words that are right
And words that are not, but are almost right
Is like, as Twain once explained with a shrug,
That between lightning and a lightning bug.