I
f you and your local scout troop go all together
on a hike, you may be altogether tired when you get back. As this
example shows, altogether and all together do not mean the
same thing. We use all together to indicate that the members of a
group perform or undergo an action collectively: The nations stood
all together. The prisoners were herded all together. We use all
together only in sentences that can be rephrased so that all
and together may be separated by other words. Thus you can tell
that all together is correct in the sentence The books lay all
together in a heap since you can rephrase it as
All the books lay together in a heap.
The adverb altogether, on the other hand, has
several different meanings. It’s easy to see how confusion might arise
with the phrase all together when we use altogether to
mean “all told, in all”: Altogether, there were fifty people at the
wedding. Most frequently, however, we use altogether as a
synonym for entirely or completely: The researchers tried an
altogether different approach this time. But we can also use it as a
sentence adverb meaning “with everything considered, on the whole”:
Altogether, I can understand why she took offense