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

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.

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.

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

Language itself changes slowly but the internet has speeded up the process of those changes so you notice them more quickly.

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

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