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.

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

As I get older and I get a few more years experience I become more like Dad, you know, King Lear.

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

The internet is an amazing medium for languages.

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

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.