So, whats the difference between 総て　and 全て　as I understand they're both read as （すべて） but is there a certain occasion when its better to use one or the other.

and what's the deal with Japanese having different 漢字 for the same word?　like 眼 and 目 （め） or 見る　and 観る

[Zgarbas]

I've never seen 総て used.

There are multiple reasons for having different kanjis; sometimes it's a language shift (one has become archaic), sometimes it shows a change in meaning. 眼 is more medical than 目 and can refer to the pupil, and 観る has a wider visual scope (soccer games, landscapes) than 見る. It's much like how one can see, look, observe, glower, gaze, and glare; languages tend to have a lot of variety.

Actually in the book I'm reading at the moment the author (or rather the translator) always uses 総て (and 判る). It's basically part nuance and part personal preference.

Judging by this answer, some sort of distinction used to be made between 全て and 総て (and also 凡て) based on the origins of their kanji, but nowadays they're for all intents and purposes the same word, and 全て is used almost exclusively. As for 眼, even though め is used very often as its reading in literature in the way Zgarbas described, its only officially recognized kun-yomi as prescribed by the 常用漢字 list is まなこ, whose meaning is closer to "eyeball". As for 観る, I've heard conflicting opinions from native speakers. When I first used 見る to refer to the act of watching anime on lang-8 a user corrected it to 観る, saying that you're supposed to use different kanji for "「人の顔を見る」の｢みる」" and "「映画（テレビ、演劇、etc）の「みる」". After I started consistently using 観る in my later posts another user told me something like "while 観る is probably more correct, I wouldn't really fuss over whether it's 観る or 見る. If in doubt, just write 視聴する".

Thank you all for your answers

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