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David Crystal

  • Roxie Pell

    For Everybody

    …you ask them, ‘Why are you so upset?’, and they can’t answer you. For the New Yorker, Adrienne Raphael talks to linguist David Crystal about our age of abbreviation.

  • Lauren O'Neal

    No Wonder We Need Spelling Bees to Remember It All

    Silent letters, multiple possible sounds per letter, counterintuitive letter combinations…why is English spelling so damn weird? David Crystal, author of linguistic history Spell It Out, explains the numerous and conflicting forces that, both intentionally and not, warped our orthography. Just one…