Txting: The Gr8 Db8
By David Crystal
Oxford University Press, £9.99, 250 pages
FT Bookshop price: £7.99

If you’ve been waiting for someone to give a good kick to text messaging for desecrating the English language, a white-bearded linguistics professor might seem just the pedant for the task. In that case, David Crystal’s latest book will disappoint. “Texting is one of the most innovative linguistic phenomena of modern times,” is his conclusion. “I am fascinated by it.” He even adopts text-speak for his title, Txting: The Gr8 Db8.