Pickwick Papers

Sons & Lovers

Mysterious Affair at Styles

Death world

Guardian online 23/11/11

NYTimes 24/11/11

CEFR

Misc Ling Papers

Aver-age

COCA

Total words

296,000

161,000

57,106

58,095

11,940

12,084

93,808

33,726

. full stop

19,364

65.4

14,515

90.1

4,650

81.6

4,783

82.5

522

43.5

760

63.3

4644

49.4

2,269

66.7

65.3

21,304,861

, comma

32,618

110.2

12,492

77.6

4,282

75.1

2,420

41.7

570

47.5

776

64.7

4810

51.2

2,258

66.4

61.6

23,849,941

; semi&colon

3,469

11.1

697

4.3

77

1.4

6

0.1

12

1

12

1

356

3.8

106

3.1

3.2

782,692

: colon

144

0.5

273

1.7

132

2.3

5

0.1

43

3.6

41

3.4

552

5.9

321

9.4

3.4

1,360,298

! exclamation

1,527

5.2

1,973

12.3

413

7.2

75

1.3

0

27

0.3

5

0.1

3.3

368,622

? question

1,897

6.4

1,335

8.3

838

14.7

314

5.4

13

1.1

6

0.5

809

8.6

1

0.0

5.6

1,620,720

’ apostrophe/ single quote

24,688

83.4

4,259

26.5

1,104

19.4

1,225

21.1

175

14.6

175

14.6

384

4.1

362

10.6

24.3

953,027

“ double quote

1,560

5.3

10,430

64.8

4,437

77.8

2105

36.3

271

22.6

262

21.9

239

2.5

44

1.3

26.7

na

- hyphen

8,297

28.0

3,109

11.9

1,457

25.6

1006

17.3

133

11.1

154

12.8

1081

11.5

420

12.4

15.3

392,700

Total per 1000

315.5

297.5

305.1

205.8

145

182.2

186.5

236.7

208.7