This book opens readers' eyes to something they see all the time but take for granted: street signs. It is a portrait of the signs on modern English streets: what they look like, who and what they are for, how they link to English history and how they form part of life in multilingual England today.

Vivian Cook was Emeritus Professor of Applied Linguistics at Newcastle University, UK. He was known for his work on second language acquisition, particularly for the concept of multi-competence, and wrote technical textbooks and popular books on areas of linguistics ranging from intonation to first language acquisition to spelling.