This inquiry examines the form oops and its function as an Illocutionary Force Indicating Device (IFID) notifying apologies in a corpus of blog posts and reader comments. It centers on the adaptability of speech acts to online media and the implications for the formal choice of linguistic expressions beyond the prototypical examples of routinised apology IFIDs. Thus, this inquiry takes a closer look at the pragmatic functions of oops in the Birmingham Blog Corpus, a diachronically-structured collection covering the period 2000–2010, to obtain new insights into its use and distribution.