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From: wells@parens.zko.dec.com (Richard A. Wells)
Newsgroups: comp.compression
Subject: Re: word frequency in English
Message-ID: <22255@shlump.nac.dec.com>
Date: 22 Apr 91 17:41:28 GMT
References: <13834@adobe.UUCP>
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Reply-To: wells@tle.enet.dec.com
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation, Nashua NH, USA
Lines: 65

In article <13834@adobe.UUCP>, mjward@adobe.COM (Michael J. Ward) writes:
>Where can I find a list/dictionary/datafile of English words sorted by
>relative frequency in various classes of usage. For example, is "a" the most
>commonly used English word. followed by "the"? How about "that" compared to
>"sesquipedalianism"? Who's doing binary lookup tables based on word
>frequency?  --Mike Ward

You didn't explicitly say it had to be an on-line source.  I inherited
a copy of the following book from someone who used to write word-processing
software for Wang:

[Title page:]

"The American Heritage

WORD FREQUENCY BOOK"

John B. Carroll
Senior Research Psychologist
Educational Testing Service

Peter Davies
Editor in Chief
Dictionary Division
American Heritage Publishing Co., Inc.

Barry Richman
Executive Editor
Dictionary Division
American Heritage Publishing Co., Inc.

Hougton Mifflin Company
Boston o New York o Atlanta o Geneva, Illinois o Dallas o Palo Alto

American Heritage Publishing Co., Inc.
New York"

[Catalog data:]

"Copyright (c) 1971 by American Heritage Publishing Co., Inc.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 72-181517
ISBN: 0-395-13570-2"

[Also, it mentions:]

"Computer coposition of word data for publication by R. R. Donnelley and Sons
Company, Electrnic Graphics (R) Division, Chicago, Illinois"

[maybe they have electronic sources]

This book is over 800 pages of tables and charts of word frequencies, both
alphabetic and ranked, plus smaller frequency tables by specialized categories,
with graphs showing differences in the categories.

Hope this helps.

Richard

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  Richard A. Wells                    | Internet:   wells@tle.enet.dec.com
  Technical Languages & Environments  | UUCP:       ..!decwrl!tle.enet!wells
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