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

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.

Sending a message on a mobile phone is not the most natural of ways to communicate. The keypad isn't linguistically sensible.

Ever since the arrival of printing - thought to be the invention of the devil because it would put false opinions into people's minds - people have been arguing that new technology would have disastrous consequences for language.

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.

Language changes and moves in a different direction evolving all the time. Where a lot of people see deterioration, I see expressive development

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