^l APPENDIX. 



I have sedulously endeavored to avoid this tendency ; and, in- 

 deed I have gone over many of the pages previously examined, 

 finding not more than one per cent, of words wrongly marked as 



my own. , „ ,. , . 



I will "-ive an account of my method of proceedmg, asking 

 attention^to its details. As the basis of the inquiry I chose 

 the unillustrated edition of Webster's Dictionary of l8o2 ; un. 

 illustrated, because the average number of words to a page could 

 be more easily had, as the page was not broken up by cuts. 1 his 

 •edition contains 1281 pages of defined words. I first proceeded 

 to find the relative frequency of the various letters of the alpha- 

 bet as the i7iitial letters of words. This has of course been 

 often done, but I do not know where to refer to it. The number 

 of Bao-es devoted to each letter in my edition is as below :— 



A 90.6; B69.6; C 136.0; D t7.8 ; E 55.9 ; F 58.T ; G 38.3; 

 1144 1; 156.3; J 8.2; K6.t; L40.2; M 58.5 ; N 19.6; O 

 27 6- P 106.1 ;Q 8.0; I169.T; S 150.5 ; T64.3; U 35.6; 

 V 20.6 ; W 33.0 ; X 0.4 ; Y 2.9 ; Z 1.6. The tenths were esti- 

 mated ' The order of frequency as initial letters is then : — 



1 S- 2, C; 3, P; 4, A ; 5, D ; 6, R ; 1,B; 8,T; 9, F ; 10, 

 M- 11 I 12 E; i3,n; 14,L; 15, G; 16, U; 17, W ; 18, 

 O ;' 19,' V; 20, N ; 21, J ; 22, Q; 23, K; 24, Y; 25, Z ; 26, X 

 The relative frequency can be deduced from the numbers first 

 given, and the further consideration that there were 1281 pages 

 of words in this dictionary. . ■, ^ 



My next step was to find the average number of words to a 

 page : to this end I counted — 



10 pages in S and found T31 words 



10 " " C 



10 " " P 



1 " " K 



1 " '• Y 



1 " " Z 



655 



763 



91 



59 



84 



33 " containing 2383 



1 page averages '^2.2 words 



The book contains 92,488 words. 



I then proceeded to count the words that I use in writing or 

 speaking. This was done rapidly, yet, as I have said, it wf en- 

 deavored to keep out all unusual words except such as I felt that 

 I had an undoubted right to retain. 



Each word which in the text is printed in capitals was counted 

 once for itself, but each of its meanings was not counted : except 

 that a verb whether transitive or intransitive was only once 

 counted The counting was not done on a unitorra plan ; and i 

 will give each result as it was obtained, in order that a verihca- 

 tion can be had, if desired. 



2 (1'7) 



