It’s hard to imagine now, but there was a time when people disagreed over the best word to use when answering the telephone. Alexander Graham Bell, for example, advocated answering with Ahoy!, while Thomas Edison argued for Hello. As linguist...
A listener has a question about emoticons, those little sideways symbols you type to suggest emotions in informal electronic writing. You know, like using a colon, dash, and a capital P to stick out your tongue like this 😛 or using a colon, dash...