to Know
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The examples that follow illustrate several of the sections that appear in our Every Word Counts manuscript
analysis report. The full report details the entire novel of nearly 40,000 words.
Note the following excerpt from Chapter 2 of The Wizard of Oz. Once the prepositions, pronouns, sight words, and
elementary vocabulary words are dimmed, it is easy to see at a glance which words bring the color, character, and style
to Baum's text.
She was awakened by a shock, so sudden and severe that if Dorothy had not been lying on the soft bed
she might have been hurt. As it was, the jar made her catch her breath and wonder what had happened;
and Toto put his cold little nose into her face and whined dismally. Dorothy sat up and noticed that the
house was not moving; nor was it dark, for the bright sunshine came in at the window, flooding the little
room. She sprang from her bed and with Toto at her heels ran and opened the door.
The little girl gave a cry of amazement and looked about her, her eyes growing bigger and bigger at the
wonderful sights she saw.
The cyclone had set the house down very gently—for a cyclone—in the midst of a country of
marvelous beauty. There were lovely patches of greensward all about, with stately trees bearing rich
and luscious fruits. Banks of gorgeous flowers were on every hand, and birds with rare and brilliant
plumage sang and fluttered in the trees and bushes. A little way off was a small brook, rushing and
sparkling along between green banks, and murmuring in a voice very grateful to a little girl who had
lived so long on the dry, gray prairies.
From a list of over 5,000 high school level vocabulary words and SAT study words, we provide a table of the more
difficult words appearing in the text. The following were all noted in The Wizard of Oz:
| abundance bestow boisterous brittle converse discomfort dismay |
frail gaunt headlong heedless humbug immense industrious |
luscious mar mishap plight plumage portal prompt |
pudgy solder swarm tedious telescope ventriloquist withstand |
Writers often rely too heavily upon a few bland words and unnecessary qualifiers. Note examples from The Wizard of Oz
in the table below, including 85 occurrences of the word "very"—one of the "leeches that infest the pond of prose"
according to The Elements of Style (Strunk & White).
beautiful: (38)
big: (49)
good:(74)
great: (138)
happy: (15)
know: (55)
like: (64)
little: (139)
look: (17)
many: (49)
pretty: (28)
ran: (22)
run: (12)
sad: (7)
said: (332)
say: (16)
small: (26)
suddenly: (7)
try: (14)
very: (85)
walk: (13)
wonderful: (19)
The Top 10 most frequent words from The Wizard of Oz text account for 25% of the total number of words.
The Top 30 most frequent words account for 40% of the text (nearly 16,000 occurrences).
| the: (2921) and: (1661) to: (1108) of: (825) a: (803) I: (595) was: (499) you: (489) |
in: (478) he: (453) it: (420) her: (410) they: (403) she: (398) that: (389) Dorothy: (345) |
said: (332) as: (328) for: (320) so: (307) but: (302) with: (271) had: (263) is: (260) |
at: (253) all: (244) not: (237) them: (237) Scarecrow: (217) his: (216) |
prepositions, conjunctions, pronouns, and elementary vocabulary words all stripped out. This provides a unique and
outstanding presentation of the most critical word choices you make in your manuscript.