meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing

297 GG How to Search a Corpus

Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing

Mignon Fogarty, Inc.

Society & Culture, Education

4.52.9K Ratings

🗓️ 28 October 2011

⏱️ 8 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It's a database, not a dead body.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

grammar girl here. This week quick and dirty tips launched a new podcast called

0:05.0

the Tech Talker, so we're all doing tech-themed topics to show our support. And I'm

0:10.2

glad we are because I get to tell you about a new tool from Google Books that I've

0:14.2

been using called the N-gram viewer that I probably wouldn't have mentioned

0:18.1

otherwise. The N-gram viewer lets you search the Google Books Corpus. In this

0:23.6

context, Corpus is just a fancy word for a collection of writings, but the

0:27.8

Google Books Corpus might deserve a fancy word because it's huge. It contains

0:33.6

155 billion words. And the N-gram viewer lets you search those words. And then it

0:40.2

makes graphs of how often your search terms appeared over time, starting

0:44.3

around 1800. Among other things, I've used it to see that printed materials have

0:49.3

included the word shot in friday, more often in recent years, and that wet

0:53.5

your whistle W-E-T is a much more common in print than wet your whistle W-H-E-T,

0:59.6

even though the Oxford English Dictionary lists both options. It can be a

1:04.7

little addictive once you start playing with it. I find myself thinking, well

1:09.1

sure, people say gone missing is a new phrase that's driving them crazy, but is

1:13.7

it really so new and is it really increasing? Or when did graduated college start

1:19.7

showing up in print instead of graduated from college? These questions seem a

1:24.6

lot easier to answer once you can search a Corpus. The Google Books Corpus is

1:30.2

by no means the only Corpus on the web, but from what I've seen, it has the

1:34.6

simplest interface, which makes it easier for beginners to use. However, it's

1:39.9

simplicity and the way it was made means that it also has some important

1:44.0

limitations. The first thing to keep in mind while searching is that English has

...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Mignon Fogarty, Inc., and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Mignon Fogarty, Inc. and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.