Getting Past "The"
Daniel Schneiderman
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The most commonly used word in the English language is the word “the.” (1) I know. You are blown away by this revelation.
Unfortunately, at least for me, “the” is typically where the creativity ends. I simply find it difficult, and often overwhelming, to conjure the words that will make my writing sound new, clever, or unique.
I. Combination vs. Vocabulary
What do I blame for this lack of creativity? More often than not, my insufficient vocabulary.
But is this blame-game grounded in reality?
To answer, let’s first compare my creative struggles to those of a person trying to open a combination lock without knowing the combination. They see and understand the numbers, but that is not where the problem lies. Rather, the real obstacle is getting the numbers in the right order to get past the lock, into the safe, and their hands on the gold.
Does an ill-fated wanna-be combination lock cracker ever blame the numbers themselves for their inability to open the lock? No. So why should writing be any different? While my knowledge of the English language should certainly be brought into question, is my lack of linguistic knowledge truly at fault for my creative struggles?
This question spurned me to conduct something of a “creative” exercise; a project that would hopefully prove, once and for all, that I have [at least some of] the tools needed to strike creative gold. Here is the result of that exercise.
II. The Project
According to the Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, there are 171,476 words in current use, as well as 47,156 obsolete words. The number of words swells depending on the source. For example, the unabridged Webster’s Third New International Dictionary includes over 470,000 entries. Some say even more. A project conducted by Harvard University and Google reported that the English language is made up of over one million words, including variations and archaic language. (2)
Despite the breadth of the English language, most adult English speakers only know about 20,000–35,000 words.” (3) Of these words, only about 3,000 are used in 95% of “everyday” writing. (4) In fact, only the first 1,000 words (listed by frequency) are used in 89% of everyday writing. (5) This has been largely validated by the “Reading Teacher's Book of Lists,” which claims that the first 25 words in the Oxford English Corpus make up about one-third of all printed English materials, with the first 100 words making up about half of all written English.
Considering that such a small percentage of available words are actively used, are my mental assertions that my creativity is limited by my insufficient vocabulary grounded in reality? My answer: NO.
III. Famous Introductions
So how did I come to this conclusion? Well, I started by going through the scientifically and statistically validated process (insert sarcastic tone here) of assigning word frequency ranks to the introductions of well-known novels.
Stephen King, the famous horror and thriller novelist, says that the first sentence of a book is usually the most important. “With really good books, a powerful sense of voice is established in the first line…it’s not just the reader’s way in, it’s the writer’s way in also, and you’ve got to find a doorway that fits us both.” (6)
How complex are these “first lines?” It depends on your definition of complex, but at least from a linguistic perspective, they are usually not complex at all. For example, King himself says that his favorite “quintessential” opening line is “[t]his is what happened.” (7)
Despite this natural simplicity, in reality, the opening line is often the most complex. It is a group of words that will be filled with layered themes and theories as the story evolves. In this way, the first line is usually most creative, in that it must “invite the reader to begin the story. It should say: Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this.”
So, let’s look at some famous introductions. What I have done here is taken abbreviated introductions and labeled them with their corresponding word frequency rank. (8) These ranks, published by wordfrequency.info, are based on the use of the base word, without account for variations or “collocates” (e.g., be = is, are…, bad (adj) = worse). Note that names and numbers are not numbered (labeled as “UN”), and words outside the top 5000 ranked words are labeled and bolded as 5000+.
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| 57 | 15 | 2* | 599 | UN |
“When he was nearly 13…”
- Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
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| 6 | 44 | 235* | 3 | 81 | 2980 | 54 |
“In my younger and more vulnerable years…”
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
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| 122 | 61 | UN |
“Call me Ishmael…”
- Herman Melville, Moby Dick
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| 6 | 5 | 578 | 1130 | 4 | UN |
“In a certain corner of La Mancha…”
- Alonso Quixano, Don Quixote
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| 14 | 18 | 28 | 47 | 46 | 61 |
“You do [not] know about me…”
- Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
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| 10 | 2 | 5 | 853 | 2665* | 1664* |
“It is a truth universally acknowledged…”
- Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
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| 40 | 14 | 142 | 83 | 9 | 195 | 46 | 10 |
“If you really want to hear about it…”
- J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye
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* denotes a variation/collocate
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Not one of these famous [shortened] introductions contains a word outside the top 3000 most frequently used words. In fact, each of the aforementioned authors limited their choice of words to those falling within the 98th percentile of most commonly used words (3000 divided by 171,476). (9)
So creative? Absolutely. Necessitating an expert knowledge of the English language? For the purpose of this exercise, I would argue no.
IV. Famous Quotes:
Unconvinced by my shortened [and likely misleading] samples, I then numbered out some famous quotes. (10) If interested, here they are. If not, please feel free to scroll to the bottom!
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| 7 | 2 | 32 | 28 | 9 | 2 | 27 | 2* | 12 | 2 | 1 | 197 |
“To be, or not to be, that is the question.”
- Shakespeare
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| 14 | 836 | 839 | 622 | 1801* | 4 | 1 | 1057 | 14 | 138 | 63 |
“You miss one hundred percent of the shots you never take.”
- Wayne Gretzky
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|6 | 685 | 7 | 229 | 46 | 114 | 2064 | 14 | 224 | 210 | 10 |
“In order to write about life first you must live it.”
- Ernest Hemingway
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| 8 | 93 | 988 | 4 | 1163*| 14 | 48 | 138 | 423 | 10 |
“Have no fear of perfection, you will never reach it.”
- Salvador Dali
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| 14 | 224 | 2 | 1 | 307 | 14 | 1059 | 7 | 67 | 6 | 1 | 123 |
“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”
- Gandhi
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| 32 | 1939 | 1336 | 32 | 1939 | 4636 |
“Get busy living or get busy dying.”
- Stephen King, The Shawshank Redemption
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| 10 | 2* | 769 | 9 | 811 | 23 | 10 | 2* | 283* | 138 | 9 | 8 | 127* | 9 | 2035 |
“It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.”
- Theodore Roosevelt
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| 138 | 159 | 1 | 988 | 4 | 4648 | 64 | 156 | 14 | 26 | 200* | 1 | 274 |
“Never let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game.”
- Babe Ruth
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| 1 | 2431 | 4 | 5 | 651 | 1072 | 164 | 16 | 51 | 588 |
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.”
- Lao Tzu
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| 1 | 970 | 84 | 149 | 2 | 206 | 112 |
“The best way out is always through.”
- Robert Frost
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| 452 | 7 | 8 | 391* | 3 | 2698 | 73 | 7 | 8 | 138 | 391* | 22 | 43 |
“Better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all.”
- St. Augustine
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| 1 | 209 | 2| 860 | 3 | 504 | 4 | 2756 |
“The night is dark and full of terrors.”
- George RR Martin, Game of Thrones
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* denotes a variation/collocate
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Obviously, this is not a perfect science, and I do not claim to be an expert in linguistics or word frequency. Nevertheless, based on the data provided by wordfrequency.info, and noting the limitations regarding word variants and collocates as identified above, almost all of these famous quotes include words exclusively from the top 3000 words of the English language, with only two outliers (See Stephen King and Babe Ruth, above). (11) Once again, those responsible for these moments of creative marvel limited themselves to the top two percent of the most frequently used words in the English dictionary.
V. Conclusion
It is interesting to think how creativity can be born from something that, for the most part, we all possess. While the act of writing often seems foreign to most people, the tools are there, begging to be used. Not to be forgotten, creativity can always be found at arm’s length, patiently waiting for any willing locksmith to move around some words and put them in the right combination.
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(1) https://www.wordfrequency.info/free.asp?s=y
(2) Figures consolidated from articles published at https://wordcounter.io/blog/how-many-words-are-in-the-english-language/ and https://englishlive.ef.com/blog/language-lab/many-words-english-language/.
(3) See Footnote 2.
(4) See Footnote 2.
(5) See Footnote 2.
(7) See Footnote 6 (referencing “Shoot,” by Douglas Fairbairn.).
(8) https://www.wordfrequency.info/free.asp?s=y
(9) Using the Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.
(10) https://www.keepinspiring.me/famous-quotes/
(11) Note that “striking” and “dying” may also correspond with “strike,” which is numbered 1148, and “die,” which is numbered 404 on the COCA, respectively.