{"id":1428,"date":"2019-03-22T07:47:03","date_gmt":"2019-03-22T11:47:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bethturnage.com\/?p=1428"},"modified":"2023-10-21T13:36:22","modified_gmt":"2023-10-21T08:36:22","slug":"ooh-a-question-about-lexical-density","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bethturnage.com\/?p=1428","title":{"rendered":"Ooh! A Question about Lexical Density"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"writer's<\/a><\/p>\n

(Beth Turnage Blog) <\/strong>What are the possible factors that lessens the lexical density in writing??<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A question in a comment? Yes! I was so tickled that I decided to devote an entire blog post to it. And I won’t just tell you. I’ll show you, and to do so I’ll pick on my of my favorite authors Kevin Hearne whose first thousand words of Shattered:The Iron Druid Chronicles, Book 7<\/a> is the perfect case in point.<\/p>\n

You: Wait, Beth, you’re not using Kevin’s writing direct from his book, are you? Isn’t that a copyright violation? <\/em><\/p>\n

Me: Under Fair Use Provision of US copyright law excerpts for the purpose of commentary are perfectly fine especially since I’m using less than 1% of the entire book. <\/em><\/p>\n

Why did I pick Kevin to pick on? Out of the authors I studied, Kevin, at least for this book, had the lowest lexical density percentage. And what I find fascinating is that Kevin, before he morphed into a full time writer, was a High School English teacher. He taught words<\/em> to impressionable young minds. <\/p>\n

The Entire Excerpt:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hearne, Kevin (2014-06-17). Shattered: The Iron Druid Chronicles, Book Seven. Random House Publishing Group.<\/p>\n

Lexical Density: 44.89%<\/p>\n

Glue Index: 47.5%<\/p>\n

Few things trigger old memories so quickly as authority figures from our youth. I\u2019m not saying those memories are necessarily good ones; they\u2019re simply old and tend to cast us back into roles we thought we grew out of long ago. Sometimes the memories are warm and blanket us like a mother\u2019s love. More often, however, they have the sting of hoarfrost, which bites at first, then numbs and settles in the bones for a deep, extended chill. The ancient man who was pushing himself up into a sitting position in front of me triggered very few memories of the warm sort. Apart from being brilliant and magically gifted, my archdruid had frequently been abusive and had made few friends during his life\u2014 a life that, until recently, I thought had ended millennia ago. After he bound me to the earth prior to the Common Era, I\u2019d seen him only a couple more times before we drifted apart, and I\u2019d always assumed he\u2019d died, like almost everyone else I knew from my youth. But for reasons unknown, the Morrigan had frozen him in time in T\u00edr na n\u00d3g, and now he was about to confront the fact of his time travel\u2014 with, I might add, flecks of spittle and bacon around the edges of his wrinkled lips.<\/p>\n

I hope that if I ever travel two thousand years into the future, there will still be bacon.<\/p>\n

His voice, a sort of perpetually phlegmy growl, barked a question at me in Old Irish. He\u2019d have to learn English quickly if he wanted to talk to anyone besides the Tuatha D\u00e9 Danann and me. \u201cHow long was I on that island, Siodhachan? You still look pretty young. By the looks of ye, it can\u2019t have been more than three or four years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oh, was he in for a surprise. \u201cI will tell you in exchange for something I\u2019d like to know: your name.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy name?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never called you anything but Archdruid.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, it was right that ye should, ye wee shite. But now that you\u2019re grown a bit and a full Druid, I suppose I can tell ye. I\u2019m Eoghan \u00d3 Cinn\u00e9ide.\u201d<\/p>\n

I grinned. \u201cHa! If you Anglicize that, it\u2019s Owen Kennedy. That will work out just fine. I\u2019ll call Hal and get you some ID with that name.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are ye talking about?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a question you\u2019ll be asking a lot. Owen\u2014 I hope you don\u2019t mind me calling you that, because I can\u2019t walk around calling you Archdruid\u2014 you\u2019ve been on that island for more than two thousand years.\u201d<\/p>\n

He scowled. \u201cDon\u2019t be tickling me ass with a feather, now; I\u2019m asking seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m answering seriously. The Morrigan put you on the slowest of the Time Islands.\u201d Owen studied my face and saw that I was in earnest.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwo thousand?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s right.\u201d<\/p>\n

He flailed about for something to hold on to; the number was too huge to register, and the stark fact that he had been uprooted and could never go back to his old earth was a deep, dark well into which he could fall forever. He opened his mouth twice and closed it again after uttering a half-formed vowel. I waited patiently as he worked through it, and finally he latched on to me, having nothing else in front of him. \u201cWell, then, you were on one of those islands too. She must have set us there around the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, I didn\u2019t get to skip all that time in an eyeblink. I lived through it. And I\u2019ve learned a few things you never taught me.\u201d He grunted in disbelief. \u201cNow I know you\u2019re pulling me cock. You\u2019re telling me that you\u2019re more than twothousand years old?\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s what I\u2019m telling you. You might as well brace yourself. The world is far bigger and far different than it was when you left it. You\u2019ve never even heard of Jesus Christ or Allah or Buddha or the New World or bloody buffalo wings. It\u2019s going to be one shock after the other.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what a shock is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course he didn\u2019t. He\u2019d never heard of electricity. I\u2019d thrown in a modern Irish word with my Old Irish.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut your lack of hair is certainly a surprise,\u201d he said, gesturing at my close-cropped skull. It was starting to fill in from when I\u2019d had to shave it all off\u2014 a consequence of a recent encounter with some Fae who\u2019d tried to chew off my scalp\u2014 but to Owen\u2019s eyes it must look like an unnatural cosmetic decision. \u201cAnd what in nine worlds happened to the rest of your beard? Ye don\u2019t look like a man. Ye look like a lad who had a rat die on his chin.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt works for me,\u201d I said, dismissing it. \u201cBut look, Owen, I\u2019m wondering if you can do me a favor.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo I owe ye one?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019d still be on that island if it weren\u2019t for me, so I\u2019d say so.\u201d<\/p>\n

My archdruid huffed and wiped at his mouth, finally dislodging the bacon bits that had rested there.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is it?\u201d I raised my right sleeve over my shoulder, revealing the ravaged tattoo at the top of my biceps. \u201cA manticore destroyed my ability to shape-shift back to human, so I can\u2019t shift to any of my animal forms until it gets fixed. Would you mind touching it up?\u201d<\/p>\n

He scowled and flared up. \u201cI fecking taught ye how to tame a manticore, didn\u2019t I? Don\u2019t try to tell me I didn\u2019t! That isn\u2019t my fault.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t say\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I remember ye complaining about it too.\u201d He affected a falsetto to mock me. \u201c \u2018When am I ever going to meet a manticore?\u2019 ye said. \u2018Why do I have to learn Latin? When are we going to learn about sex rituals?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHey, I never said that!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYe didn\u2019t have to. There was a year ye couldn\u2019t sneak up on anyone because your knob would peek around the corner first and everyone would say, \u2018Here comes Siodhachan!\u2019 and then the rest of ye would follow. Ye remember that?\u201d<\/p>\n

Desperate to return the conversation to more recent scars\u2014 a much safer topic than my uncomfortable puberty\u2014 I said, \u201cThe manticore struck first, and taming him was never an option.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s always an option.\u201d \u201cNo, it\u2019s not. You weren\u2019t there, and you\u2019ve never had to deal with manticore venom. It requires all of your attention to break it down, trust me. And once I managed to do it, I was so weak that I\u2019d never have been able to survive another dose. I was severely wounded and unable to confront him without leaving myself open to another shot. Any attempt to tame him would have been fatal. I was lucky to get out of there alive.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The first paragraph starts with an impressive 52.53% lexical density, which is, IMO, the near perfect percentage. Here is the analysis:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And below is the breakdown in words. Lexically dense words are colored green:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Here you see that Kevin has a good percentage of nouns and adjectives, His non-lexical adverbs and prepositions are a tad high but don’t overwhelm the brain candy of nouns and adjectives.<\/p>\n

But as we see the rest of the excerpt is dialogue. If you pen your dialogue anywhere near how people speak it will fall the baseline of 48% lexical density.<\/p>\n

\"Parts<\/a><\/p>\n

And here are the individual sentences:<\/p>\n

\"Lexical<\/a><\/p>\n

What do we observe between the two samples? Yes, the dialogue has fewer nouns and adjectives, but more importantly, double the propositions.<\/p>\n

Your lexical density lowers when you use more prepositions,pronouns, and auxiliary verbs than nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs.<\/strong><\/p>\n

What to do?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The problem with dialogue is that if you write it as people speak it, your prose will be repetitive and boring to the eyes.<\/p>\n

Take a look at your text through an editing tool like ProWriting Aid:<\/p>\n

\"Pronouns<\/a><\/p>\n

Once you see those underlines, you see the need for grooming. ProWriting Aid agrees:<\/p>\n

\"Pronoun<\/a><\/p>\n

You don’t need to purchase access to ProWriting Aid<\/a> to help you make changes to improve your lexical density. You can use Analyze My Writing<\/a> to show you what words you can edit.<\/p>\n

______________________<\/p>\n

Excerpt: Hearne, Kevin (2014-06-17). Shattered: The Iron Druid Chronicles, Book Seven. Random House Publishing Group.<\/p>\n

Graphics from Analyze My Writing.<\/p>\n

Image by 4657743<\/a> from Pixabay<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Beth Turnage Blog) What are the possible factors that lessens the lexical density in writing?? A question in a comment? Yes! I was so tickled that I decided to devote an entire blog post to it. And I won’t just tell you. I’ll show you, and to do so I’ll pick on my of my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1633,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[23,33,1,34],"tags":[117,170,175,180,228,274,334],"class_list":["post-1428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lexical-density","category-the-writers-craft","category-uncategorized","category-writing","tag-edit","tag-iron-druid","tag-kevin-hearne","tag-lexical-density","tag-pronouns","tag-shattered","tag-writing-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bethturnage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bethturnage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bethturnage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bethturnage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bethturnage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1428"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/bethturnage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2209,"href":"https:\/\/bethturnage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428\/revisions\/2209"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bethturnage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bethturnage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bethturnage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bethturnage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}