Master for Webs » finished checking http://master4webs.com All tools for web masters Sun, 02 Oct 2011 08:08:36 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Word for the Wise : Common words http://master4webs.com/word-for-the-wise-common-words.html http://master4webs.com/word-for-the-wise-common-words.html#comments Thu, 22 Apr 2010 07:30:02 +0000 admin http://master4webs.com/?p=443 Even though most folks have finished checking their lists of whose naughty and nice, some people are still making lists. Whether it’s ordering provisions for Y2K or ranking the top inventions of the last thousand years, lists seem to be on everyone’s mind this final week of 1999. That makes this a fine time for us to share a list of our own.

A class of second-graders working on a list of the 1000 most common English words came knocking at our lexical door. We don’t know the 1000 most common words in our language, but we were able to track down one helpful study.

The authors of The Educators’ Word Frequency Guide reviewed more than 60,000 electronic texts containing more than 17 million words (not different words, of course, but instances of words). They then ranked those 17 million words according to their frequency. The result?

Well, it isn’t interesting enough for a Top Ten countdown. We’ll tell you that number ten was “was.” And “and” was number three. The exciting “of” ranked number two and can you guess number one? The answer is “the.” The list of the top 100 words is filled with articles, prepositions, pronouns, adjectives, and verbs, with three notable exceptions: the nouns water (number 99), time (number 64), and people (number 51).

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