Our everyday lives are inevitably touched--and immeasurably enriched--by an extraordinary variety of miniature forms of verbal communication, from classified ads to street signs, and from yesterday's graffito to tomorrow's headline. Celebrating our long history of compact speech, Short Cuts offers a well-researched account of this unsung corner of the linguistic world, inspiring a new appreciation of the wondrously varied forms of our briefest exchanges. The authors shed light on an ever-growing field of minimalist genres, ranging from the bank robbery note to the billboard, from the curse hurled from a car window to the suicide note, and from the ghost-word to the ring tone. The authors look at the comic strip's maledicta balloon and the dinner-interrupter's robocalls, the advice column and the obit, and the many ways your personal appearance tells us who you are, from the message on your baseball cap to the tattoo on your ankle.--From publisher description.