WordCruncher Monthly

Calculate Phrase Frequency

Knowing the most frequent words of a text can be insightful, but it doesn’t always tell the full story. Looking at the most frequent phrases can provide insights about the style of a writer and show common themes in the text. With the Phrase Compare report, you can get a table of the most frequent phrases in a text.

calculate phrase frequency

Find the most common 4-word phrases...

In a text like Les Miserables:

  • "that is to say"
  • "at the same time"
  • "in the midst of"
  • "in the presence of"

In a corpus like the TED Talk Corpus:

  • "I don't know"
  • "thank you very much"
  • "in the United States"
  • "at the same time"

Other times caluclating phrase frequency can be useful:

  • You want to identify themes of a text.
  • You’re interested in finding which phrases you use too much in your own writing.
  • You want to impress your teacher, so you identify which phrases they use in their published papers. You then use those phrases in your own essays.

So how do I actually calculate phrase frequency?

You can calculate the phrase frequency of a text by following these steps:

  1. Open a book in WordCruncher. To convert your own texts for use in WordCruncher, use the free WordCruncher Indexer program to convert your files.
  2. Go to Analyze > Book Reports > Phrase Compare (N-Grams)
  3. Make sure that Book 2 says "None"
  4. Change the phrase length that you want to calculate. You can calculate between 1- and 9-word long phrases.
  5. Press the Compare button to get a list of all the phrases in the text.
  6. Change the number in the length tab to see different phrase-lengths.

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