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It's the Google N-grams dataset. It covers all the books that Google has scanned in their corpus, which, as I understand it, is virtually every book that's bee
by antognini 4y ago
It's the Google N-grams dataset. It covers all the books that Google has scanned in their corpus, which, as I understand it, is virtually every book that's been published in the 20th century (at least for English).
I agree that this might just be measuring increasing informality in published works.
- lumost 4y agoThis could also be a bias in the google books dataset. As I recall, the older google books dataset relied heavily on library preservation. It's probable that library curation would filter books for utility, longevity, and educational purpose. These filters would certainly penalize informal books.
- TimTheTinker 4y agoMy first thought as I scanned the abstract was that since the '90s, the volume of novels with informal dialog has gone through the roof -- especially novels for teens and young adults.
- permo-w 4y agothe amount of trashy celebrity autobiographies/books written by self-help gurus/informal-style recipe books being published has almost certainly risen in recent years too