COMPARISONS OF WORD FREQUENCIES IN AMERICAN AND BRITISH ENGLISH

A new approach is adopted in the counting of frequency in the book. The counting is based on article rather than the true count. For example, if ‘the’ appears more than 1 time in an article it is still counted only once. This is very different from the tradition method. Think about the scenario: you find a word appearing 60 times in one article and someone finds a different word 50 times in 50 different articles - which frequencies of the two words are higher? You possibly choose the second one. The book also introduced possibly the world’s first American and British word comparison index – AB index. An AB index can be 00 to 100. Number 50 is the centre point. A number that is greater than 50 means the entry is more likely to be used by the British. If it is less than 50 it means that the entry is more common amongst the American.