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When it comes to the English language, few things get people as worked up these days as the whole phenomenon of text messaging.

All those abbreviations, all those misspelled words, it's destroying the language and turning us into a nation of illiterates.

No, no.

I gather that you beg to differ, Grant.

And so does author David Crystal.

He's a professor of linguistics in Britain and he's written a surprising new book on this topic.

His book is called Texting the Great Debate, right? Right. I have a copy of this book and I have to tell you it's my new Bible. The main thing he has to say is that all this talk about texting, destroying language is bunk. It's not a big deal.

For one thing, this kind of playing with language isn't new,

all right?

...