Texting is fingered speech. Now we can write the way we talk.

English, however, is kinky. It has a predilection for dressing up like Welsh on lonely nights.

Prescriptive grammar has spread linguistic insecurity like a plague among English speakers for centuries, numbs us to the aesthetic richness of non-standard speech, and distracts us from attending to genuine issues of linguistic style in writing.

Texting is fingered speech. Now we can write the way we talk.

Barack Obama's said some very nice things and he says them well. But if you ask me, the reason that we're looking at somebody who is such an inexperienced senator, who has said some very pleasant but not especially sterling or innovative things, the reason that he's considered such a big deal is simply because he's black.

I don't think that we really know a whole lot about Barack Obama at all that you would really call distinctive.

Obama is seen as very, very cool. I think a lot of people find him sexy.