Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics.

I'm Gretchen McCulloch.

And I'm Lauren Gorn. And today we're getting enthusiastic about why spelling is so hard,

and also hard to change. But first, Gretchen, it's almost time for your book to be out in the

world and I am very excited. I'm also very excited for people to finally get to read it.

But you have already read my book about internet linguistics.

I have. This is why I get to be excited because I know people are in for a trait.

And in fact, you are featured a little bit in my book about internet linguistics, which was

very funny because as I was talking about everybody else in the book, I was referring to everybody by their last

names. And I got to you, I was like, I guess I'm calling her gone for this book. Oh my gosh,

really? Despite the fact that, of course, I normally call you Lauren. That is going to be so

amazing. I may have to listen to the audio book just to laugh at that. Just so you can laugh at how I

don't have a cot cot distinction, and so I can't actually

do the vowel that you do in your name. That's okay. I'm just really excited. The book is great.

People can pre-order it now, and it's out on the 23rd of July. That's correct. And you were

explaining to me why pre-orders were so important. I'm learning a lot about books from you.

It's an interesting world. Pre-orders are really important. I'm learning a lot about books from you. It's an interesting

world. Pre-orders are really important because, first of all, they help the publisher decide

literally how many copies to print because they have a sense of how much people are interested

in the book. And also because when they're trying to count book sales for whether something

ends up as a bestseller or is on some sort

of list, all of the pre-order sales count towards that first week of sales. So if you're likely

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