Word books traditionally focus on unusual and quirky items. They tend to ignore the words that provide the skeleton of the language, without which it would fall apart, such as 'and' and 'what,' or words that provide structure to our conversation, such as 'hello.

A feature of English that makes it different compared with all other languages is its global spread.

Swearing makes an excellent relief mechanism

Spellings are made by people. Dictionaries - eventually - reflect popular choices.

Anyone interested in language ends up writing about the sociological issues around it.

The story of English spelling is the story of thousands of people - some well-known, most totally unknown - who left a permanent linguistic fingerprint on our orthography.

In effect we are, bending and breaking the rules of the language. And if someone were to ask why we do it, the answer is simply: for fun