HOW COMMON?

English is a mixture of four main languages- German, French, Latin and Danish, so it has an enormous vocabulary. No-one can say for sure exactly how big the English vocabulary is, but there are around 250 000 distinct English words. Most educated native users of English, know about 50 000 words but for everyday communication English speakers use only about 2 500 words.

So some words are used a lot, and many others are not used much and maybe not known by most users of English. In writing for websites or any promotional writing, the language must be clear and easily understood by the target audience. But how do you know which words are common or used often and which are rare, uncommon, unfamiliar- see how many words express the same idea! How often words are used is 'word frequency ranking' (note that 'Word frequency' can also refer to how often words are used in a text.)

There are many web sites that provide word frequency rankings but some of these are quite technical. Two of the easiest to use are the 'Wikitionary frequency lists' which shows the most common words based on the Gutenberg Project*. Wordcount (http://wordcount.org/main.php) is a quick way to check the frequency of single words. To use Wordcount, type the word into the 'find word' box and then click the arrow. The word will appear with its frequency ranking.

Word frequency is a huge topic, but, for business writing in English, or any kind of writing for that matter, knowing a little about word frequency and word ranking helps writers to use words that their readers will understand. And avoid sentences like this (from a travel brochure): 'The style trades on a melding of familiar lines and the panache of vibrant tropical colours and appeal'. This is almost impossible to understand. Some of the words are not used correctly, but many of the words are simply very low frequency- that is they are not used often by native users of English. According to the Wordcount ranking system, 'vibrant' is ranked 1 424th. Most native users of English will know and understand this word. 'Panache' at 26 906th may be known by educated users of English. 'Melding', however, is ranked 60 940th! Very few native users of English are likely to know this word. The phrasal verb 'trades on' is also low frequency. Many of the people you want to read your material are, of course, not native users of English. They are people who use English as a second language. They have to read in English because about 80% of the published information in the world is in English. Non-native users of English do not, of course, have as big a vocabulary as native users. This is yet another reason to use familiar, low frequency words in your writing.

Does this mean that your writing will be characterless, lifeless, humdrum, stale, tedious? No, because English has such a rich vocabulary to choose from. I used five synonyms for 'boring'. The words 'boring', 'stale', 'lifeless' and 'tedious' all fall within the 20 000 word range and are likely to be known by almost all native users of English. 'Humdrum' and 'characterless' are lower frequency, 33 596th and 51 026th respectively.

Another tool that can help you create clear, easily read text is Textalyser (http://textalyser.net/). This tool analyses a paragraph or even a whole text or website for word frequency. Note, however, that Textalyser checks a whole range of other features about the text, such as how often individual words are used and the average number of syllables used per word. Although this information is useful, you are really looking for a 'readability' score. Without going into detail, readability is simply how easy or difficult a text is to read. Textalyser gives two readability scores. The first one, Gunning-Fog Index is probably the most accurate and easy to understand. The range is basically from 1 to 20, with 1-6 being 'easy' and 20 or more 'hard'. I used Textalyser to check the first two paragraphs of this article and got a score of 10.2, i.e.about the middle of the range, which is about the level of readability that you should aim for.

So, armed with a Thesaurus, a word frequency ranking tool and a text analyser, you can create text that is rich and interesting, but easily read and understood by your target audience.

References:
Wordcount- see http://wordcount.org/main.php

Wikitionary- http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Frequency_lists

Textalsyer - http://textalyser.net/ Note that the 'Textalyser'
Note: The results of the Textalyser analysis are quite academic and some of the results may not be very reliable, however it does give a general idea of how easy it is for your readers to understand your writing.


*Project Gutenberg - an ongoing project to create a library of e-books. To date over 30 000 books have been digitalised for online reading (see http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page).