Get a grip

4 comments May 28th, 2008

There are three choices with the phrase “get hold of,” and that is by far the preferred one.

A distant second is “get a hold of.”

Way down at the bottom — one usage expert calls it “a horror” — is the colloquial “get ahold of.”

If you’re using this or a similar phrase, take hold of the first one.

If you’re quoting someone who used an “a” in there, grab hold of the second one. Notice it reads the same as the third one.

So there’s really no reason to write “get ahold of,” except when someone is telling you not to, as I just did.