Style: Hell of a OR helluva?

Which is it?

 

The first one.

 

helluva... I feel its one of the few times NOT to fix a quote.
Did the person say "Hell of a" or "helluva"

 

Whichever they said.

If the coach said that little Johnny made a "helluva running catch" that's what I'd write.

 

Helluva is not a word. If you guys can hear a difference between "helluva" and "hell of a" you have different hearing skills than I do. Just because a person says it fast doesn't make it a word. Would you write "waytogo" instead of "way to go"? Same thing, in my opinion. I wince when I see helluva. It's got to be a made-up word from the 1960s that "scribes" fell in love with and keep using, even though they shouldn't.

 

I always lean toward "hell of a" but I see helluva so often, I had to ask.

 

This is a shitty answer, but I actually kind of just go by the tone of the story and what fits better in the quote for me.

 

Hell of a...or in my paper "H*** of a."

 

Neither

 

You're all going to hell for cussing.

Oops, so am I.

Dammit (at this point it's a lost cause anyway).

 

Ditto. Ditto.