A Sunday Times correspondent rang up last week to ask what I thought about the claim made by Jean Gross (described as the new UK 'communications czar') that 'the average teenager uses just 800 words in daily communication'. It was one of those waste-of-time interviews, where I spoke to the reporter for about 20 minutes, explaining how simplistic statements of that kind are rubbish, and what the linguistic realities are, and got one sentence in the report for my pains. Plus an ignoring of all ...