Author: ( NGRAM )

Not all is well in the state of english grammar. Never has been, apparently.

I just can’t let this one go. It seems so obvious (to me) that ‘Not all is well’ is what most people mean to say. ‘All is not well’ must mean that ‘Nothing is well’; that ‘everything is bad’ and ‘nothing is good’. But total and unambiguous wretchedness is not that common, therefore ‘All is not well’ is not so useful, right?

But the NGRAM tells us that ‘All is not well’ is what (nearly) everyone chooses to write. Shakespeare himself is responsible for this mess, when he lets us know that Hamlet suspects some dirty dealings in the death of his father:

All is not well;
I doubt some foul play.
– Hamlet, Act 1 Scene 2

It’s early in the play; how could matters already be so thoroughly pernicious? Hamlet, and by extension Willy S., should have instead observed that Not all is well. Something’s off, I don’t yet know what it is, but I am going to get to the bottom of this, that’s what Hamlet meant.

Yet in a thoughtful forum on WordReference, attracting english speakers from two continents, one discussant suggested that subtlety was in order:

I wouldn’t say it means “everything is bad” – “All is not well with their marriage” is saying that their marriage is not perfect, but I hear it as something of an understatement. In fact it usually means . . . “things look really bad.”

Another discussant said that when the phrase is spoken out loud, stress is everything:

All is not well. = Everything is bad.
All is not well. = Not everything is well (but some things are).

The second is the way it’s usually understood.

Yeah, they’re probably right. All is not well.

OK. All good. No, really. All good.