The world’s most successful book on language has launched its third edition after a raft of revisions that took even the author by surprise.

“It’s amazing how much has happened in just twenty years,” writes David Crystal, author of seminal work, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. For the third edition, he has had to revise every one of the thousands of language statistics in the text and bring it up-to-date for the digital age – and for an age in which ‘language death’ is increasing.

Whole new content areas have opened up since the book was first published in 1987. Two new sections now deal with the rise of electronic communication in all its current forms from internet and email . . . → Read More: David Crystal: “It’s amazing how much has happened in just twenty years.”