August 21, 2004

Tracking the way we use language WordCount (TM) is an artistic experiment in the way we use language. It presents the 86,800 most frequently used English words, ranked in order of commonality. Each word is scaled to reflect its frequency relative to the words that precede and follow it, giving a visual barometer of relevance.

WordCount data currently comes from the British National Corpus (R), a 100 million word collection of samples of written and spoken language from a wide range of sources, designed to represent an accurate cross-section of current English usage.

posted by dt118 20 years ago
  • *%@*!
  • Once again, beeswacky finds the most elequent way to say it.
  • "Spong" beats "smudging"? Who'd a thunk it.
  • 1305 1097! And I am 65629!
  • My apologies, beeswacky. I did a search, before posting, for "WordCount.org" and it did not return anything. I guess I should have just searched for "WordCount". Had I done so, I would have seen this earlier post.
  • Guess, I missed this the first time, but it's pretty interesting The only thing I really don't know how useful the fancy flash 'artistic' depiction of the words is. I'd really just like to full, cold numbers without all the silly extras.... but that's just me.
  • Heh. Okay, 'twas an experiment, dt118 -- afraid I got a wee bittie weary of niminy-piminy, teensy-wee periods being used to point out double-posts, and thought I'd try something a little more attention-getting for a change. And, damn, it felt good!
  • Funny how very different words are bedfellows in terms of usage frequency. I ran across some viable band names: Blood Station, Carpal Caliphate, Spiv Rightio. Or maybe the last is a lead singer.