In the years before the American Civil War (1861-1864), journalists thought it was great fun to misspell words for comic effect.
Writer Charles Farrar Browne (1834-1867), for example, who wrote political humor under the byline Artemus Ward, was not the only writer to adopt deliberate misspelling as a stylistic device.
Take OK. The most likely origin of OK is as an acronym for “Oll Korrect.” By 1839, this misspelling, had been compressed to O.K. Now, OK is taken as a word and not an acronym.
The word OK has found its way into just about every language on earth. It’s usually written in all capitals, and pronounced as separate letters.
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