Highly Irregular

Highly Irregular is an illustrated history of English as told through all the things that are weird about it. Why are there so many silent letters? Why do we have irregular verbs? What is the deal with the word 'colonel'? The weirdness of English can be blamed on specific influences that shaped it, and in this book Arika Okrent investigates the many puzzles of our language to show how English came to be the way it is today.

Arika Okrent is a linguist and author of In the Land of Invented Languages. She worked in a brain research lab on her way to a Psycholinguistics PhD from the University of Chicago, and now writes about language for various publications including Mental Floss, The Week, Smithsonian Magazine, Popular Science, Slate, and Aeon.
Sean O'Neill is an illustrator and writer living in Chicago. He is the creator of the Rocket Robinson series of graphic novels for young readers.
Arika and Sean are also known for their series of live-drawing whiteboard videos on language and other topics, produced by mentalfloss.com.