What is the most common or correct spelling of "blah blah blah"?
My question stems from when I first wrote it as "bla bla bla" in an English text, but a friend told me it should have been written as "blah blah" so I decided to ask here.
Before that I had checked it out on some online English dictionary and Google search but I wasn't able to clear it out.
The phrase "blah blah blah" and the single word 'blah' are both very informal. In fact, even though the OED is pretty descriptive, I'm surprised it has an entry for 'blah' (it is not something I expect in print, and that's all that OED relies on).
As to what constitutes a standard, for English, there is no government supported official body, like the French Academy, which dictates usage. It is a little more decentralized in English writing culture, relying on style guide writers (from book or newspaper publishing houses or self declared but recognized experts), and the primary and secondary school systems.
The phrase is informal enough so as not warrant an official, correct spelling by any authority. Because of its informality, one would not expect a magazine or newspaper editor to regulate its spelling because they would just try not to have it appear at all.
This might seem disingenuous because after all it is in the OED and there are many instances written on the net. Some people do write it. But the authorities on what should be written would probably say that it should not be written at all.
Then it falls to practice. And only practice defines (circularly) what is the most common. And that seems to be 'blah blah blah'.
Your friend 'corrected' you by telling you what he's seen more often. 'correct' and 'common' are not the same thing, but when there's no correctness authority it is all we have to go on.
As to whether two or three repetitions, I've never heard or used less than three in speech; if you're going to spout nonsense, might as well go all the way.
Just for giggles behold the Google Ngram:
"blah blah" is clearly more common.
Due to feedback, here's another silly metric:
Google search results:
bla bla: about 54,100,000
bla bla bla: about 36,300,000
blah blah: about 68,800,000
blah blah blah: about 54,400,000
Not exactly conclusive, but blah blah still wins... see hippietrails comment, he is better at googling than me.
"bla bla" -"bla bla bla": About 23,500,000 / "blah blah" -"blah blah blah": About 24,900,000 / "bla bla bla": About 26,500,000 / "blah blah blah": About 28,500,000 -- so they're all in the same ballpark but bla bla is least popular and counter to your findings, blah blah blah is most common.
Commented
Aug 24, 2012 at 16:17
Blah blah blah is the normal way to spell it. Bla looks kind of blah.
"Bla bla" to me looks like I would spell it in German. In English you probably (my theory) need the "h" at the end to ensure pronunciation.
A dictionary is seen by most people as a language reference. However, the editors of a dictionary do not define a language.
In the German-speaking world, the verb "to google something" for "to look something up on the internet" was included in a famous German dictionary for the wide and common usage. This demonstrated how language is not defined by dictionaries. If words enter common usage they become part of the language and therefore the dictionaries are at some point obliged to include this words.
So, if "blah" is the most common spelling of this word, you probably will find it at some point in time in you trusted English dictionary.
