When I was young, I was a big fan of a certain genre of books that allowed young readers to choose adventures of their very own as they read. We didn’t know it back then, but that was hypertext, and those books were, in some sense, a precursor to the World Wide Web, only with a better plot and less pr0n.

I learned a lot from those books—never explore Mayan ruins with a girl named Sally (Maria is okay, though); if your bus gets hijacked, don’t run away down a road (hide in the bushes); and selling a series of more than a hundred children’s books is pretty easy if you have a good gimmick.

I’ve never been to any Mayan ruins, and I’ve never been hijacked—two things that I am grateful for—so those first two lessons I learned weren’t very useful. The third lesson, though—that one seems like a nugget of gold now.

I have a gimmick, and I’m not afraid to use it. Actually, that isn’t quite true. I am afraid that if I gave you a regular issue with nothing more than a gimmicky hypertext adventure about linguistics, most of you would cancel your subscriptions, and SpecGram would descend into financial ruin.

So, instead, I’m giving you a supplemental issue with nothing more than a gimmicky hypertext adventure about linguistics. It’s an extra, a freebie. You didn’t pay for it so even if it is worthless, you still got your money’s worth. Vultures.

Anyway, I’m done rambling now. The best introduction to Choose Your Own Career in Linguistics is, really, its own introduction page. Go there now and find out (or choose for yourself) what is really going on.

	Choose Your Own Career in Linguistics
	SpecGram Vol CL, No α Contents