“I don’t give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.” - Mark Twain

So, I know everyone’s been on the edge of their seats wondering what the final outcome will be on the whole okay/OK question. I’m reclaiming my place at the tip of the spear and once again joining the epic battle to bring “okay” into popular usage. One day, the AP Styleguide will read: “Okay, okayed, okaying, okays. Do not use OK.”

“We must never take these words too seriously. Words are very important, but then, if we take them too seriously, we destroy everything.”
- Unknown

As a member of the Professional Organization of English Majors, I have a certain interest in preserving language. This could also be attributed to my somewhat anal tendency for wanting things to be correct. If you mess with language, it is no longer correct and therefore you are wrong. It’s for this reason that I insist on writing “all right” while others are content to believe “alright” is all right. Clearly it’s not.

However.

The other side of my brain accepts that language will inevitably change over time. So-called rules only exist because enough people agree on them. If enough people agree, knowingly or not, to change the rules, the rules evolve. And half the fun of language is seeing what can be done with it, which rules can be bent or broken. Ever heard the expression “play on words”? Language is to be enjoyed.

This week I learned that in my effort to be correct, I don’t always get the punchline.

For the longest time, I’ve been spelling out “okay” even though most people just write “OK” - bunch of lazy bums. Somewhere I read that “okay” is the preferred spelling. I must have. At least, I’m pretty sure I did. But I noticed that the spellchecker in Thunderbird was marking “okay” in red, meaning it questioned my spelling of the word. That ticked me off a little, because if they’re going to put a spellchecker in software, it should at least work properly. And then … self-doubt. What if I’m wrong? I looked it up, first on Mirriam-Webster’s online. Bah. What does Dictionary.com say? D’oh. Both of those listed all the variations, but neither said which is preferred. So, I checked the Associated Press Stylebook, often referred to as the journalist’s bible, for the final word on the word. I found this entry:

Fine, I won’t.

So, I went back to the Dictionary.com site and that’s when I noticed the word history at the bottom of the page. Apparently, OK began as a joke. It seems Boston newspapers in the 1830s thought it was funny to abbreviate a phrase and supply the meaning in parentheses, LTIA (like this, I assume). Ha. And, wouldn’t you know, it was even funnier if the words were misspelled. SP (Sew phunnee).

March 1839. O, fateful month. O.K. appeared in a newspaper to mean “oll korrect” - get it? Because it’s not really correct! SP!

My reason for avoiding “OK” was because I didn’t want to use an abbreviation. Now it turns out, if I really want to spell out what “OK” stands for, I’d have to write “oll korrect,” which I’m not about to do. So, “OK” it is.

Incidentally, the reason OK caught on in popular usage while other newspaper jokes did not has to do with its use during the campaign of President Martin Van Buren, whose nickname was Old Kinderhook (a name taken from his birthplace).