Text messaging is just the most recent focus of people's anxiety; what people are really worried about is a new generation gaining control of what they see as their language.

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.

Academics don't normally manage to alter people's way of thinking through their strength of argument.

You don't talk to a linguist without having what you say taken down and used in evidence against you at some point in time.

Language has no independent existence apart from the people who use it. It is not an end in itself; it is a means to an end of understanding who you are and what society is like.

It took three years to put Shakespeare's words together, there were a lot of words to be studied and a lot of words to be sorted out, and it proved to be a major project.

Research shows that those kids who text frequently are more likely to be the most literate and the best spellers, because you have to know how to manipulate language.