Trail4 steps
Words, wires and keyboards
How a newspaper joke, an election and the telegraph shaped the way we write.
Language and technology shape each other. This trail follows a single word into the machinery of modern writing.
- I
It begins with a misspelling printed in Boston in 1839.
No. 086Word originLanguageWhy do we say “OK”? The world’s most recognised word began as a deliberately misspelled joke in a Boston newspaper. - II
OK spread along the wires, which were the 19th century’s version of the internet.
No. 117ObjectTechnologyThe Victorian internet Long before email, the telegraph gave the 19th century online romance, hackers, slang and information overload. - III
Telegraph operators may have helped shape the keyboard you are using right now.
No. 100ObjectTechnologyWhy your keyboard says QWERTY The layout you type on every day was designed for a machine that no longer exists, and the famous reason for it may be wrong. - IV
And the spelling you type on it was frozen centuries before, in the middle of a change in pronunciation.
No. 051PhenomenonLanguageWhy English spelling makes no sense English spelling was frozen just as the language’s vowels were changing, so the spelling records an accent nobody has had for centuries.