Yesterday was New Years Day and I was, because of that fact, going to write something, today, about all of the new laws that came into effect yesterday - because that's the kind of guy I is.
However, in researching all of the laws that came into effect yesterday, in order to discuss them at you today, I came across an article in The Guardian by Mark Rice-Oxley (great name, sounds like a farming instruction) which featured the following sentence:
"Also in America, for the first time it will be OK to be a gay Boy Scout, while for their British counterparts, it's OK to be an atheist."
Now, actual content aside (you should be allowed to be a gay/atheist whatever you please wherever you like) and skipping over the fact that there should be a comma after the word "time", I still cannot wrap my head around the fact that some of the world's most respected publications consider the use of the letters O and K as an acceptable way of presenting, in text, the word "okay".
Don't you wrinkle your dirty great eyebrows at me! I'm well aware, thank you muchly, that I play fast and loose with the rules of grammar and spelling - most recently, when I typed comical, not-a-word "muchly" in place of not-comical, actual words "very much", not to mention all of the other times I laughed in the face of common practice in this very stampede of words what this is.
But New York Times I ain't - and I can assure you that were I writing something important - like a shitty list of things that happened last year for some shitty website - I could very easily turn off the dum-dum speak and write as eloquently and as grammatically soundly as the next turd-generator.
And with that imagined defamation of my ability to have a say in this matter unnecessarily countered with all the sentence weaving skills I possess, I'd now like to point out that the etymology of the word "okay" is a fuzzy mess of speculation and blatant lies and given that as we are unsure which two words are the owners of the aforementioned O and K - if any such words exist at all - it is stupid, not to mention wholly irresponsible, to present a word that has evolved beyond whatever it may (or may not) have been an acronym of in the past in the form of that very same unconfirmed abbreviation.
Furthermore, words such as "radar" and "laser", words that most definitely are acronyms, are no longer presented on paper or digital screen in the form of capital letters - so why is "okay" not afforded the same courtesy? It is, after all, a more common word with a plethora of alternative meanings.
More important than all of the points presented above in flowery words, however, is the undeniable truth that capital letters have become shorthand for shouting - and nobody wants the word "okay" shouted at them.
So, here's my proposal for a new law (a day late, I realise):
Let's all agree to write the word "okay" the way it's written in the middle of this sentence.
Because all the other ways fuck me off.
