December 2003 Archives

The Fog Index

When we started adding the Gunning Fog index to the Word Frequency Analyser, we soon found that the same text could be given a very different score by two sites, though they were using the same formula.

Word Frequency Tool 3

The Word Frequency Analyser also shows a Word List Breakdown, which displays words by their length:

Word Frequency Tool 2

The Word Frequency Tool also displays a Word Frequency List underneath the box with the general information. The list contains an alphabetical list of each word used in the text, together with the number of occurences and how many syllables it contains:

Word Frequency Tool

We have added a Word Frequency Analyser in the Members' Area. You simply copy and paste the text you want analysed in the box and click Calculate Now! and the results will be displayed automatically. The first box will display the following information:

Total Word Count 59
Total Unique Words 45
Number of Sentences 4
Average Words per Sentence 14.8
Lexical Density 76.27%
Fog Index 5.90

Cloud Nine

According to Bill Bryson's 'A Short History of Nearly Everything', the 1896 edition of the International Cloud Atlas had ten basic types of clouds and cumulonimbus, the fluffiest was number nine, which is where the expression 'on cloud nine', meaning 'extremely happy' comes from.

This train..

'This train will now terminate here.' This was the announcement given on a London Underground train I was travelling on. The train was supposed to go beyond the place where it stopped.

A sure bet

In today's Independent, a British broadsheet newsapaper, Adrian Hamilton wrote the following sentences:

But I do know that if I were Tony Blair, I'd take these intimations of mortality as the occasion to get out of the job. Indeed I'm willing to bet that by Easter he may well have done so.

Using Google- Two Thirds

In the forum, there is a discussion about singular and plural, and asks whether 'two thirds of the cake' should be followed by a singular or a plural verb. The logic seems unarguable:

Part of the cake has been eaten.
Some of the cake has been eaten.
Most of the cake has been eaten.
Two thirds of the cake has been eaten.