Some times you just need to rant
Much earlier today I was encouraged to do a little rant in live chat. The word "freakin" came up a lot during this rant.
I've been trying to get more familiar with Googe Webmaster Tools and Analytics lately, but some of it just really has not made sense.
In webmaster tools it was giving me good high number of indexed pages based on my site map, but when I went to the Index Status I was seeing a consistent 2. Today, for no reason what-so-ever, that 2 jumped up to 94. I definitely don't have 94 URLs to index...I think it's counting all my images.
There have been some other odd things, but my rant earlier pretty much helped me release my frustrations with those.
I made a blog about the grammar police a while ago. There have been some really good funny posts about punctuation and common grammar/spelling errors since. One I see pop up that drives me nuts for some reason is the misspelling of 'a lot'. It's two words. 'A' and 'lot'. A lot is misspelled a lot!
- Alot is not a word. It does not exist
- A lot is the opposite of a little. Lot can be a noun that means a large number or amount
- Allot means to distribute or divide. It is a verb. (He went through his allotted work quickly.)
Does anyone care? Maybe, and maybe not. We all have our little pet peeves though. And if this little three bullets helps someone to spell 'a lot' correctly in the future than I would have helped at least one person.
Thanks a lot folks. I really needed to get that off my chest.
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Thanks Brook as I'm also lost with Webmester Tools and have not had the time to look deeper into it.
Guilty guilty guilty, I always do alot and get a red line :-( sorry I will try to be better about it ;-)
Hi there. Sometime it matters to me and sometimes it doesn't. Im notorious for those errors. And I'm ok with that. I guess to me if it bothered whoever is reading it then they don't need to read it. Problem solved. What matters more to me is the content. And if it can keep my attention instead of me trying to find the quickest way out of the website. Right? ;)
Yes and no. I think you hit the nail on the head with "sometimes it doesn't matter." I would say if you are working on building an authority site that shows you as a professional in some capacity you'd want to spell these words correctly or you will end up losing traffic. Especially if they are wrong too often. In other words, if you want serious people to take you seriously then these words need spelled correctly.
On the other hand, if you have a more earthy site people will tend to be more forgiving. Or if it's just a quick message in a comfortable setting with people you know.
I'm far less likely to care if I see an accidental 'alot' used, but using 'allot' instead of 'a lot' will get me every time.
Don't forget there! They are important too, but I've been seeing the incorrect 'a lot' used quite frequently lately. I had to do the rant because I didn't want to come off as a jerk to specific people when correcting them.
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I needed that alot... oops, a lot :P