How 'OK' took over the world

It crops up in our speech dozens of times every day, although it apparently means little. So how did the word "OK" conquer the world, asks Allan Metcalf.

"OK" is one of the most frequently used and recognised words in the world.

It is also one of the oddest expressions ever invented. But this oddity may in large measure account for its popularity.

It's odd-looking. It's a word that looks and sounds like an abbreviation, an acronym.

We generally spell it OK - the spelling okay is relatively recent, and still relatively rare - and we pronounce it not "ock" but by sounding the names of the letters O and K.

Visually, OK pairs the completely round O with the completely straight lines of K.
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International OKs

* Native American Choctaw: Okeh - it is so
* Scottish: Och aye - oh yes
* Greek: Ola kala - all is right
* German: ohne Korrektur - without [need for] correction
* Finnish: Oikea - correct
* Mandinka: O ke - that's it

So both in speech and in writing OK stands out clearly, easily distinguished from other words, and yet it uses simple sounds that are familiar to a multitude of languages.

Almost every language has an O vowel, a K consonant, and an A vowel. So OK is a very distinctive combination of very familiar elements. And that's one reason it's so successful. OK stands apart.

Ordinarily a word so odd, so distinctive from others, wouldn't be allowed in a language to begin with. As a general rule, a language allows new words only when they resemble familiar ones.

Clever coinages may be laughed at and enjoyed, but hardly ever adopted by users of the language.

So it was in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, in the late 1830s, when newspaper editors enjoyed inventing fanciful abbreviations, like "WOOOFC" for "with one of our first citizens" and OW for "all right".

Needless to say, neither of these found a permanent place in the language. But they provided the unusual context that enabled the creation of OK.

On 23 March 1839, OK was introduced to the world on the second page of the Boston Morning Post, in the midst of a long paragraph, as "o.k. (all correct)".
OK Corral sign OK may have originated from a comical misspelling

How this weak joke survived at all, instead of vanishing like its counterparts, is a matter of lucky coincidence involving the American presidential election of 1840.

One candidate was nicknamed Old Kinderhook, and there was a false tale that a previous American president couldn't spell properly and thus would approve documents with an "OK", thinking it was the abbreviation for "all correct".

Within a decade, people began actually marking OK on documents and using OK on the telegraph to signal that all was well. So OK had found its niche, being easy to say or write and also distinctive enough to be clear.

But there was still only restricted use of OK. The misspelled abbreviation may have implied illiteracy to some, and OK was generally avoided in anything but business contexts, or in fictional dialogue by characters deemed to be rustic or illiterate.

Indeed, by and large American writers of fiction avoided OK altogether, even those like Mark Twain who freely used slang.

But in the 20th Century OK moved from margin to mainstream, gradually becoming a staple of nearly everyone's conversation, no longer looked on as illiterate or slang.

Its true origin was gradually forgotten. OK used such familiar sounds that speakers of other languages, hearing it, could rethink it as an expression or abbreviation in their own language.

Thus it was taken into the Choctaw Native American language, whose expression "okeh" meant something like "it is so".

"Modern English translations of the Bible remain almost entirely OK-free”

US President Woodrow Wilson, early in the 20th Century, lent his prestige by marking okeh on documents he approved.

And soon OK was to find its place in many languages as a reminder of a familiar word or abbreviation.

But what makes OK so useful that we incorporate it into so many conversations?

It's not that it was needed to "fill a gap" in any language. Before 1839, English speakers had "yes", "good", "fine", "excellent", "satisfactory", and "all right".

What OK provided that the others did not was neutrality, a way to affirm or to express agreement without having to offer an opinion.

Consider this dialogue: "Let's meet again this afternoon."

Reply: "OK."

Compare that with: "Let's meet again this afternoon."

Reply: "Wonderful!" or "If we must."
Martin Van Buren Martin Van Buren was a big part of OK's initial takeoff

OK allows us to view a situation in simplest terms, just OK or not.

When someone falls down, the question is not "how well are you feeling?" but the more basic "are you OK?".

And any lingering stigma associated with OK is long since gone. Now OK is not out of place in the mouth of a US president like Barack Obama.

Speaking to schoolchildren in 2009 he said: "That's OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who've had the most failures."

The word would also easily slip from the mouth of a British prime minister like David Cameron.

And yet, despite its conquest of conversations the world over, there remain vast areas of language where OK is scarcely to be found.

You won't find OK in prepared speeches. Indeed, most formal speeches and reports are free of OK.

Modern English translations of the Bible remain almost entirely OK-free. Many a published book has not a single instance of OK.

But OK still rules over the vast domain of our conversation.

Allan Metcalf is the author of OK: The Improbable Story of America's Greatest Word.

Speed is Speedkills

A small town in the Australian Outback has decided to change its name for a month in an attempt to increase road safety.

The town of Speed - a blink-and-you'd-miss-it town in the countryside of Victoria - will be known as SpeedKills.

Speed-dwellers are hoping it will persuade drivers to slow down on country roads.

Speed is hoping to become something of a global, internet sensation with the launch of this novel safety campaign.

The idea was the brainchild of the Victoria Transport Accident Commission, which soon won over Speed's 45 residents.

Such was their enthusiasm, that they even made a video as part of the campaign.

It has already proved a hit on the social networking site, Facebook.
A welcome sign to the town of Speed, 400 km (250 miles) northwest of Melbourne The town of Speed has managed a name change with the help of the internet

While the campaign is running, one local resident has even agreed to change his own name.

Phil Down, a local wheat and sheep farmer, will become Phil Slow Down.

It is hoped the idea will catch on around the world.

Road safety officials in Victoria have already identified five towns in the United States called Speed which it hopes will support name changes of their own.

The wisdom of catching mice in China

Dick van Motman, CEO & President -- DDB China Group has been living in China long enough to understand the wisdom in advocating popular Chinese sayings and the quotations of the country’s greatest figures. At a recent Internationalist event celebrating the successes of Agency Innovators from around the world, Dick talked about his focus on the end goal by citing the simple words of the late Chinese leader, Deng Xiao Ping: "I don't care what color the cat, as long as it catches mice."

Through his leadership of the DDB China Group, Dick has certainly demonstrated that the agency is indeed the cat that catches mice. For the past five years, he has worked tirelessly to build DDB Group from a small office with just a couple of clients to one of the strongest and most integrated agencies in China. DDB China Group has grown six-fold in the past five years and now consists of three offices, in three cities, offering three disciplines (DDB, Tribal DDB and RAPP). And the honors have been pouring in.

However, Dick van Motman shared two topics at the Innovators Summit last week that underscore just how to be a successful marketer in China today:

* Don'’t underestimate the digital power of the Chinese market.
* Don’t be afraid to compete in a daunting arena -- even if you're McDonald's and you're trying to sell more chicken than KFC.

Dick outlined 8 key points that affect marketers in China's new Digital Frontier:

1. The Scale is Phenomenal. China now has 420 million connected citizens and expects 600 million by the end of 2011.
2. The Citizen of the World are Connected. And China is becoming the most digitally connect country on earth. (In a one-child society, there’s a need to reach out to others.)
3. China’s World is Mobile. Today China has 285 million mobile users.
4. This World is also Social. Over 90% of China’s netizens use instant messaging.
5. Surprisingly, This World is also Driven by Self-Expression. In China, 163 million people consider themselves to be active bloggers and produce an extraordinary amount of content.
6. The Familiar Names Are Missing. China's developers have created the country's own platforms -- preferring them to the likes of facebook, YouTube, Google, etc.
7. In this World, The Rules are Different. This may be the greatest divide between East and West. In China, 28% distrust banner ads and 47% distrust ads in games.
8. The Path to Success Lies in a Social Approach.

In a demonstration of marketing fearlessness, Tribal DDB helped McDonald's to encourage Chinese consumers to try its McWings -- even though KFC was the market leader for restaurant chicken purchases and had nearly double the number of locations. The Chinese enjoy snacking and love chicken wings; however, the fast-food industry is highly competitive. Tribal DDB’s solutions underscored several tenets of China’s new digital world -- online word-of-mouth and social media, but also took advantage of the country’s affinity for couponing.

Through announcements on major social networking sites, McDonald’s promised to honor chicken wing coupons from any other food establishment. This generated massive social media buzz and McWings Mania. Over 2 million people pledged their love of McDonald's chicken wings online, the mainstream media jumped on the story -- added fuel to the coupon swaps and the lines for McWing purchase, and McDonald’s increased sales by 30%. It even resulted in a Harvard Business case study.

Dick van Motman often jokes about his extraordinary internationalist background. He’s of mixed descent: Dutch/Indonesian, Portuguese/Jewish, and grew up in Holland. After studying marketing and economics, followed by sociology, he worked in Korea, Indonesia, Hong Kong and Singapore before making his way to China. However, he has shown -- regardless of those roots or perhaps because of them -- that he understands how to market to China and certainly recognizes how to be the cat that catches mice.--The Internationalist Magazine