tough-sweet-stuffy

A style analysis library based on the book by Walker Gibson

A. Questions about word-size

1. What is the proportion of monosyllables in the passage?
2. What is the proportion of words of more than two syllables?

B. Questions about substantives

3. How many first- and second-person pronouns does the passage contain? How many imperatives are there?
4. Are the subjects of the finite verbs mostly neuter nouns, or do they refer to people?

C. Questions about verbs

5. What is the proportion of finite verbs to total words?
6. What proportion of these finite verbs are forms of to be?
7. What proportion of these verbs are in the passive voice?

D. Modifiers

8. What proportion of the total words are true adjectives?
9. How many of these adjectives are themselves modified by adverbs?
10. What proportion of the total words are noun adjuncts?

E. Subordination

11. What is the average length of the subordinate clauses?
12. What proportion of the total passage is inside such clauses?
13. How frequently are subject and main verb separated by intervening subordinate structures? How long are these interruptions?

F. Other effects of tone

14. How frequent is the determiner the?
15. Are there any sentences without subjects, or without verbs, or both? Are there any contractions?
16. How many occurences are there of these marks of punctuation: parentheses, italics, dashes, question marks, exclamation points?