Is 'OK' Okay?

People often assume that it's tough to be my copy editor, but the truth is that I'm pretty easygoing. I almost always accept my copy editors' changes—except when they try to change "OK" to "okay." Then I become a raving maniac. My usual wishy-washy countenance turns to granite.

One of my favorite stories is the origin of "OK," and to me, "OK" is the purer form.

The origin of 'OK'

"OK" was born in America in the 1830s. (So as an aside, you wouldn’t want to use "OK" in a novel set before the 1830s. That would be an anachronism).

Much like the text messaging abbreviations of today, "OK" was an abbreviation for a funny misspelling of "all correct": "oll korrekt." Journalists of the time seemed to have loads of fun making up these off-kilter, insidery abbreviations. Boston journalists are credited with "OK," and according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the “okay” spelling didn’t appear until 1895 in an Australian publication based in Sydney called “The Bulletin.” (So again, if you are writing a novel, you shouldn’t use the "okay" spelling before at least 1895.)

And in case you want even more spelling options, in 1919, H.L. Mencken wrote about Woodrow Wilson using the spelling “okeh,” but that one didn’t stick. Thank goodness!

Journalists in the 1830s came up with other odd abbreviations with similar origins too. They had "OW" for "oll wright” (a misspelling of “all right”) and “NS” for “nuff said,” but “OK” stuck while the others fell into obscurity because president Martin Van Buren, whose nickname was Old Kinderhooks, because he was born in Kinderhook, NY, abbreviated “Old Kinderhooks” into “OK” and adopted the campaign slogan "Vote for OK.” He called his campaign supporters the "OK Club,” and all that campaign publicity established "OK" in the American lexicon. It stuck.

'OK' and 'okay' are both OK

Today, the two spellings peacefully coexist: the Associated Press recommends the "OK" spelling, and the Chicago Manual of Style recommends “okay.” My publisher follows Chicago style for my books, but to honor the word's origins, I insist on the "OK" spelling. And so far, they’ve been kind enough to indulge me.

'Okay' dominates in fiction, but 'OK' wins overall

Because "okay" is the form recommended by Chicago, though, and Chicago...

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