in.case.you.were.wondering...

OK vs. okay.
I've never been a fan of OK, preferring okay instead. Like most of my preferences, there's no logical reason behind it. (Numbers for example. I don't like odd ones, other than 17. Why? Who knows, though 17 is my birthday, so it's granted an exception.) My best guess is that it has something to do with the nonconformity of the letters- like someone's shouting OK instead of slipping it in among the rest of the words. This isn't to say that I'm all about conformity either- I do appreciate when a little uniqueness is thrown into the mix. Over the past few months, I've really become more aware of the extent to which I dislike OK, and after coming across it again today, decided to check up on its background. Here's what I learned. Okay is a variant of OK. OK was first noted in a boston newspaper in 1839. At that time, they liked to use abbreviations for phrases and work in some crazy sort of humor. The phrase that was being abbreviated was "all correct," and the humor was that neither O nor K started the words, but sounded right- like "oll korrect." Unlike other random abbreviations the newspaper came up with, OK stuck in part because president van buren used it in his reelection campaign in 1840. He was born in kinderhook, ny, and was called "old kinderhook." The campaign talked about making all things O.K. (meaning all correct by reelecting old kinderhook). I guess I'm the one using the abbreviation/variant, but I still like it better than the big flashy capitals.