An Independent investigation of Grammarly data reveals that the median number of words one uses in written language is about 400.
Apparently, a handful of words describe all our feelings and actions. Many educated people believe that English is a dynamic language with many words available.
In reality, if nobody uses words, they are de facto obsoleted and nonexistent.
Inevitably we start acting, feeling and thinking simply. For lack of a better (usable) word…
Here is the story:
My acquaintance, Beginner Writer (B.W.). recently subscribed to Grammarly service and soon got a charming encouragement letter.
You used 4,011 unique words last week, which is more unique words than
95% of Grammarly users.
B.W. Contacted Grammarly to find out what it meant and got a standard answer.
While I am unable to share the exact distribution, let me try to shed some light on how we get the stats that we share with you in the Grammarly Insights reports.
< followed by a trivial explanation that unique words are, in fact, unique words that are counting …. >
Grammarly did not disclose the shape of the curve. But B.W stayed on the service for half of a year, sometimes writing a lot and occasionally a little. And got data during a few months as of summer fall 2022
Put several months of data into the table, and here you go, a chart of the number of words and percentages of users using less than the specified number of words.
The plot is consistent and shows that the median number of unique words Grammarly users use is only about 400. Only 10% of users use more than 2000 words. What does it tell us?
We could think about the special set of people using Grammarly service. Those people are writing consciously and worry about doing it right.
It is well-known from philosophical literature that language translates into feelings and actions. Primitive, simple vocabulary leads to black-and-white opinions without shades of grey.
Making life look colourless and sometimes annoying