Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Popular Words

Tonight my daughter discovered Google Books Ngram Viewer—what fun!  Have you seen this thing?  You can compare how often words/phrases occur in books, and end up with unending entertainment.  I could do this all night.





5 comments:

  1. That's Geeky, Nerdy and Supercool!

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    1. I know! Isn't it great? The last one (home/war/peace) is the one I found most interesting. Of course, my daughter was searching things like totes/supes/cray-cray. :/

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  2. How often do you think those three would appear?

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  3. I had no idea such a thing existed! It sounds great. I once knew a professor who invented a formula for Jane Austen's novels. It had something to do with the number of words in each sentence and apparently the result was a literary study.

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    1. Well THAT'S fascinating! I love words and sentence structure. As a reader I know that those things play an integral role in an author's style, but it's pretty amazing that 'style' can be made formulaic.

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