Both all together and altogether are correct but have different meanings. Then what is the difference?

All together: with everyone or everything, all at once, in a group
Altogether: completely, overall, holistically, as a whole

An easy way to distinguish between the two is to remember that all together typically applies to multiple people or things, and altogether usually applies to one entity or action that is examined as a whole. Check out the example sentences below.

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All together

Let’s go to the wedding all together in the same car.

In the example above, a group of people are going to a wedding together. Because this is referring to multiple people, we would use all together here instead of altogether.

They were all together in the beginning but split up into groups of two by the end of the day.

Like the previous example, we are talking about a collective group of people, so we would use all together instead of altogether.

The group of students pulled the rope all together, pulling Tom back up to the surface.

Because multiple students pulled together, using all together would be correct.

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Altogether

He had to abandon the idea altogether and start from scratch.

Here, the word altogether means “completely”; the subject completely abandoned the idea.

The new engine was different altogether, running on hydrogen instead of fuel.

In this sentence, the writer is trying to express that the engine is holistically and completely different, so using altogether instead of all together is correct.

Because of the recession, Ms. Smith had to close her shop altogether.

Ms. Smith did not just close her shop for the day; she completely shut down her business. Therefore, you would use altogether here, instead of all together.

So if you and your friends go to an amusement park, are you going all together or altogether? If you answered the former, all together, you are correct! Because multiple people are doing an action together, they are going all together. All together does not only apply to people; you can also use it for inanimate objects.

If you buy all components of a computer (motherboard, monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc.) from the same store, you are buying them all together instead of buying them separately from separate stores.

You can try out more practice questions below to see if you can correctly distinguish when to use all together and altogether. The answers are at the end of the page.

Practice Sentences:

  1. The radio brought families all together/altogether.
  2. You can mix the different colors all together/together to get the color brown.
  3. After they broke up, Paul ignored Emily all together/altogether.
  4. They chose to go on the bridge all together/altogether, ultimately breaking
  5. The pills can be taken all together/altogether without causing any problems.
  6. The company may discontinue the product all together/altogether.
  7. All together/altogether, the brand saw a 30% increase in sales from the advertisement campaign.
  8. The trip will not cost more than $500 all together/altogether.
  9. Because the different teams had to work all together/altogether for this project, they quickly got close.
  10. It was all together/altogether a terrible idea.

Answers:

  1. all together
  2. all together
  3. altogether
  4. all together
  5. all together
  6. altogether
  7. Altogether
  8. altogether
  9. all together
  10. altogether

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