Okay vs O.K. vs ok. Which one is the correct word? Which do you use?

Question

Okay vs O.K. vs ok. Which one is the correct word? Which do you use?

Answer 1

They actually are all correct. I personally like to use ok. Despite the widespread use of okay/O.K./ok, no one know for sure where the word came from! There are all sorts of theories. Wikipedia lists 36 different possibilities!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_proposed_etymologies_of_OK

Answer 2

I use 'okay'.. it's really more okay than O.K. or ok.

Okay??

Answer 3

Okay is the way to spell it out but ok and o.k. Are just the shortened abbreviated versions. I use "okay" just because I like to spell everything out. Just a weird thing I have. (:

Answer 4

The concept of "correctness" in English is a myth invented by schoolteachers. Anything goes if your intended audience or readership is O.K. with it.

Opponents of the supposedly semi-literate President Andrew Jackson claimed he used the abbreviation O.K. to approve something as "orl korrect", but they did so in order to discourage its use to mean "Old Kinderhook" in reference to his political opponent Martin Van Buren which was being used to emphasize his birthplace in the formerly Dutch speaking backwoods of upper New York State.

I made my first visit to North America in 1956 confident that all its inhabitants would make free use of "okay" in its various orthographic mutations---only to spend my time in St. Louis, Missouri, where it seemed no one ever used it: they said "allrightee" instead.