So there is a change in the ratio of words used in print between the 1850s and the 2020s. This happens in English and Spanish (i'm assuming this is really an Am

So there is a change in the ratio of words used in print between the 1850s and the 2020s. This happens in English and Spanish (i'm assuming this is really an American centric discussion, as the paper says this, but the review doesn't mention America). There seem to be many possible reasons for this which aren't mentioned in the analysis. What percentage of the population were literate in 1950? What class of people were the printed material aimed at? I would imagine that the introduction of cheap effectively disposable books and magazines from the 1940s onwards, and the massive social changes which have lead to the vast majority of people having the education and spare time to read if they choose to will have totally skewed any analysis on the printed text. Even taking a single source (the NYT) will not account for changes in readership. There's an attempt to chase market share when competing with other news sources, with editors intentionally changing the tone and material they include to attempt to capture market share. Anyhow, an interesting idea, not convinced the analysis is strong enough to remove what I think of as more likely sources of the change in language.