Editing OK (section)

==Early history in print==
[[Allen Walker Read]] identifies the earliest known use of ''O.K.'' in print as 1839, in the edition of 23 March of the ''[[Boston Morning Post]]''. The announcement of a trip by the Anti-Bell-Ringing Society (a "frolicsome group" according to Read) received attention from the Boston papers. Charles Gordon Greene wrote about the event using the line that is widely regarded as the first instance of this strain of ''OK'', complete with [[Gloss (annotation)#In linguistics|gloss]]:

{{blockquote|The above is from the ''[[Providence Journal]]'', the editor of which is a little too quick on the trigger, on this occasion. We said not a word about our deputation passing "through the city" of Providence.—We said our brethren were going to New York in the Richmond, and they did go, as per Post of Thursday. The "Chairman of the Committee on Charity Lecture Bells," is one of the deputation, and perhaps if he should return to Boston, via Providence, he of the Journal, and his ''train''-band, would have his "contribution box," et ceteras, ''o.k.''—all correct—and cause the corks to fly, like ''sparks'', upward.}}

Read gives a number of subsequent appearances in print. Seven instances were accompanied with glosses that were variations on "all correct" such as "oll korrect" or "ole kurreck", but five appeared with no accompanying explanation, suggesting that the word was expected to be well known to readers and possibly in common colloquial use at the time.

Various claims of earlier usage have been made. For example, it was claimed that the phrase appeared in a 1790 court record from [[Sumner County, Tennessee]], discovered in 1859 by a [[Tennessee]] historian named [[Albigence Waldo Putnam]], in which [[Andrew Jackson]] apparently said "proved a bill of sale from Hugh McGary to Gasper Mansker, for a Negro man, which was O.K.".<ref>[https://jacksonianamerica.com/2010/12/09/ok-o-k-or-okay/ Jacksonian America: "OK, O.K. or Okay?"] [https://books.google.com/books?id=9DjMSsxUR_UC&q=%22proved+a+bill+of+sale%22&pg=PR1 "History of Middle Tennessee" by A.W. Putnam, 1859, page 252]</ref> The lawyer who successfully argued many Indian rights claims, [[Felix S. Cohen]], supported the Jacksonian popularization of the term based on its Choctaw origin:
{{blockquote|When Andrew Jackson popularized a word that his Choctaw neighbors always used in their councils to signify agreement, the aristocrats he threw out of office, always grasping at a chance to ridicule backwoods illiteracy, accused him of abbreviating and misspelling "All Correct". But O.K. (or okeh, in Choctaw) does not mean "all correct"; it means that we have reached a point where practical agreement is possible, however far from perfection it may lie.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Felix S. |last=Cohen |title=Americanizing the White Man |journal=The American Scholar |volume=21 |issue=2 |date=Spring 1952 |pages=177–191 |jstor=41206885 }}</ref>}}

David Dalby brought up a 1941 reference dating the term to 1815. The apparent notation "we arrived ok" appears in the hand-written diary of William Richardson traveling from Boston to New Orleans about a month after the [[Battle of New Orleans]].{{sfn|Heflin|1941|p=90}} However, Frederic Cassidy asserts that he personally tracked down this diary, writing:
{{blockquote|After many attempts to track down this diary, Read and I at last discovered that it is owned by the grandson of the original writer, Professor L. Richardson, Jr., of the Department of Classical Studies at Duke University. Through his courtesy we were able to examine this manuscript carefully, to make greatly enlarged photographs of it, and to become convinced (as is Richardson) that, whatever the marks in the manuscript are, they are not OK.{{sfn|Cassidy|1981}}}}

Similarly, [[H. L. Mencken]], who originally considered it "very clear that 'o. k.' is actually in the manuscript",{{sfn|Wait|1941}} later recanted his endorsement of the expression, asserting that it was used no earlier than 1839. Mencken (following Read) described the diary entry as a misreading of the author's self-correction, and stated it was in reality the first two letters of the words ''a h[andsome]'' before noticing the phrase had been used in the previous line and changing his mind.{{sfn|Mencken|1945|p=275}}

Another example given by Dalby is a Jamaican planter's diary of 1816, which records a black slave saying "Oh ki, massa, doctor no need be fright, we no want to hurt him".<ref>{{cite news |first=David |last=Dalby |date=8 January 1971 |title=O.K., A.O.K and O KE; The Remarkable Career Of an Americanism That Began in Africa |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1971/01/08/archives/ok-aok-and-o-ke-the-remarkable-career-of-an-americanism-that-began.html |access-date=10 September 2013 |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |page=31}}<br />{{*}}{{cite news |first=David |last=Dalby |title=The Etymology of O.K. |newspaper=The Times |date=14 January 1971}}</ref> Cassidy asserts that this is a misreading of the source, which actually begins "Oh, ki, massa ...", where ''ki'' is a phrase by itself:

{{blockquote|In all other examples of this interjection that I have found, it is simply ''ki'' (once spelled ''kie''). As here, it expresses surprise, amusement, satisfaction, mild expostulation, and the like. It has nothing like the meaning of the adjective OK, which in the earliest recorded examples means 'all right, good,' though it later acquires other meanings, but even when used as an interjection does not express surprise, expostulation, or anything similar.{{sfn|Cassidy|1981}}}}