Louise Cummings is Visiting Professor at York St John University, UK and a professor in the Department of English at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She has authored and edited twenty-seven books on pragmatics, clinical linguistics, speech-language pathology and public health communication. She is the Editor of Cambridge Elements in Health Communication and Routledge Research in Speech-Language Pathology. She is a member of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists and the Health & Care Professions Council in the UK.

• Dedication; Acknowledgements; List of figures; List of tables; List of boxes; 1. COVID-19: a new illness with implications for language; 2. 'But you look so well' … language as an unseen problem in long COVID; 3. Validating the lived experience of people with long COVID; 4. Language difficulties in long COVID: a global phenomenon; 5. The impact of long COVID; 6. 'If we cannot be cured, we must at least be helped'; Appendix A. Test materials and survey administration; Appendix B. Analysis of survey data; Appendix C. Research questions and statistical tests; Appendix D. Resource glossary.