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Novelists in Numbers

Counting the favourite words of well-known authors: Stephen King, Hemingway and others.

Stephen King once said that wannabe authors should avoid using adverbs which end with 鈥榣y鈥� but does he follow his own advice? Data journalist Ben Blatt decided to find out. He also analysed texts written by some of the best known authors to discover the words they use obsessively, and why. Elmore Leonard whose book inspired the film Jackie Brown loved exclamation marks, while Vladimir Nabokov who wrote Lolita was keen on the colour 鈥榤auve.鈥�

Presenter: Tim Harford

(Photo: American novelist Ernest Hemingway in 1954 on safari in Africa. Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

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9 minutes

Last on

Tue 31 Oct 2017 02:50GMT
91福利社 World Service except News Internet

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  • Mon 30 Oct 2017 13:50GMT
    91福利社 World Service except News Internet
  • Tue 31 Oct 2017 02:50GMT
    91福利社 World Service except News Internet

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