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.

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.

Although many texters enjoy breaking linguistic rules, they also know they need to be understood.

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

Swearing makes an excellent relief mechanism

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

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