Espy's writing career took off in the late 1960s; he eventually authored fifteen books on language, and his poetry and articles regularly appeared in Punch, Reader's Digest, The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, and Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics.
Seine schriftstellerische Laufbahn begann in den späten 1960ern – schließlich schrieb er fünfzehn Bücher über Sprache und seine Gedichte und Artikeln erschienen regelmäßig in Punch, Reader’s Digest, The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, und Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics.