So apparently you can use "the" too much.

Ursa major said:

The piece in question had 91 instances of the word, the, in 1344 words -- i.e. 67 for every thousand words -- which is two-thirds the size of your ratio.

Are you sure you're only counting the word, the, and not occurrences of the string, the, as can be found in there, they're, their, other, these, cathedral, etc.?

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I forgot to add the space after "the," In 4326 words there were 269 instances of "the." So about 61 per 1000... for some reason I rounded the number of "the" words up and the word count of the text down, and the mental arithmetic still somehow yielded 100 per 1000 words.

It's what fits and more importantly are the THEs invisible. THE is one of the most common words and can't be avoided 100%. If you've over used the word THE it really pushes a reader out of the storyline. If the THE can be zapped and the meaning of the sentence remains the same, then zap it. If the THE can be changed to something else, consider changing it. If the THE creates the impact you want, keep it.

All very unhelpful, but that is the joy of writing - there are no rules. But for me, if you can zap it, do so - a general rule of life for me!

I just know that what will follow are a few weeks of not enough the. Like when I came to the conclusion that my sentences were too long I wrote almost entirely in short punchy sentences for a while. Once I realized that that could be bad as well I found some middle ground.


A balance will come though.

You get better, but I never yet found a balance I was happy with.

@Bowler1 just out of interest, how many THEs per 1000 words are their in your work.

I know that a cover all number like this isn't the best way to measure how well I am doing, I was just curious.

I have 26 in the first 1,000 words of my current WIP. Less than half of your 61, a little over 40% by my quick math.

I wouldn't worry about your THE count, but study your usage and decide how it looks. Then look for other repeating habits, we all do it and sneaky words all always gate crashing the party... zap 'em, kill 'em all off....

Without realising - ALLs have joined the party.

ZZzzaaaappppPPPP.

Lol

In my first chapter, one which I have actually cleaned up a little has only 48 per 1000, so that's encouraging.

I know what you mean though, its the bad combinations and poor use of the word I have to look out for.

Bowler1 said:

You get better, but I never yet found a balance I was happy with.

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Unless it was the balance upon a new Raygun.

Mad Alice said:

Unless it was the balance upon a new Raygun.

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Yeah... but there always seems to be new and better RAY GUNS. Big one's, small one's, shiny one's, deadly one's, tickly one's - deep breath, curry one's, bowel one's (there fun, well... for me), and... and... and....

Bowler1 fades into the distance listing RAY GUNS.

Current WIP:
Vocabulary 8419
Word count 128,588
"the" or "The" is most common at 6040

Various sources say that "the" is the most commonly used word, in general at about 5%, but that would be English generally not fiction. Also I have phrases that are going to always have "The", a vehicle called "The Jaggit", "the college" "the Wildgrave" "the Arch Chancellor" etc.

Whatever other faults the writing may have, no-one has complained of too many "the". I discovered some analysis programs automatically exclude "the" and some other common words!

Ray McCarthy said:

Current WIP:
Vocabulary 8419
Word count 128,588
"the" or "The" is most common at 6040

Various sources say that "the" is the most commonly used word, in general at about 5%, but that would be English generally not fiction. Also I have phrases that are going to always have "The", a vehicle called "The Jaggit", "the college" "the Wildgrave" "the Arch Chancellor" etc.

Whatever other faults the writing may have, no-one has complained of too many "the". I discovered some analysis programs automatically exclude "the" and some other common words!

Click to expand...

That's like 46 per 1000 words, pretty good considering you have the the phrases.

How did you work out the vocabulary?

EDIT: nevermind, I found some:

https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=unique+word+count

Its pretty frightening to me that my vocabulary for the 12k words I have written is about 2.5k. Need to fix that.

I've got 118 instances in 2,300 words apparently. Part of the problem might be the positioning of the word. If the sentences are repetitive in style, length etc then it's appearing at roughly the same distance apart each time.

AnyaKimlin said:

I've got 118 instances in 2,300 words apparently.

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Me too, or near enough. I've had a quick review of one chapter. While I might be able to remove one or two, I don't feel it's worth the effort to review the whole thing. In any case, that would label me as paranoid. Though if readers are bothered by the the count, maybe they are out to get me!

cgsmith said:

Its pretty frightening to me that my vocabulary for the 12k words I have written is about 2.5k. Need to fix that.

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It depends.
Vocabulary rises rapidly at first with size of work then tails off. If I had 1,000,000 words it will only be increased by new names being invented. Also mine is SF with some real science and what people might call psychic powers (called Talent in the stories). It's an entirely alien setting with one earth person, so all the names except two are made up. I've programming, engineering and very wide indeed reading background. About 5K might be more typical for a more mainstream text. A lot of the real English words I have might not be used often (bone maybe once!).
Some newspapers might be under 3k.
Randall Monroe offers a dictionary for people only wanting to use common words.
http://blog.xkcd.com/2015/09/22/a-thing-explainer-word-checker/

To help me write the words in my Up Goer Five picture, I taught my computer to watch my writing and tell me when one of the words I used wasn’t in the top ten hundred.

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see also https://xkcd.com/1133/
(always mouse hover on his cartoons)
My son bought me his first book, inspired by his "what if" column.
http://what-if.xkcd.com/

To start in a foreign language, the first hump is only having a 500 word vocabulary, with some understanding of pronunciation and grammar. Then you can make fast progress. The next barriers are fluency and finally being able to think in it / read/ listen / write /talk without translating.

prizzley said:

While I might be able to remove one or two, I don't feel it's worth the effort to review the whole thing.

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Why not?

Do you expect a publisher to do the editing for you? Unless the publishers really love your storyline their more likely to bin your work and move on to a work that is edited someone who is paranoid. This thread clearly demonstrates my fussy (paranoid) editing where my THEs are down to 26 in a 1,000 and seemingly the lowest count so far (this doesn't mean I'll be published, but shows the effort I've put in (I edit a lot (an awful lot))). This doesn't mean your THEs are wrong Prizzley, far from, but if you don't polish your work who will? For every hour of writing I manage I clock up three or four times more editing. My pattern is writing in the weekend when I have time and I'm not knackered from work, and edit during the week. I re-read/edit sections three or four times after writing and return to them a few days later and again a few weeks later. Once the whole work is done, I go through it again. I recently had a bad writing habit pointed out to me by Judge in the crits and I spent the next month correcting this (it was a big WIP by this point). Because I changed everything I went over it all again, and will again when I finish.

Rant - huff - rant....

I think I made my point (and then some).

Bowler1 said:

Do you expect a publisher to do the editing for you?

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No, I don't. However, I recognise there are more serious editing issues in my wip than a few too many uses of the. So I'm focusing on those while keeping a wary eye open for an odd encroaching the.

Bowler1 said:

Unless the publishers really love your storyline their more likely to bin your work and move on to a work that is edited someone who is paranoid.

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If a publisher doesn't love my story enough to overlook my use of the, I don't believe excising a few words will save it.

Bowler1 said:

my THEs are down to 26 in a 1,000

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That's nearly 1/2 normal. Having it very low isn't a virtue, could be bad even. All that matters is that they don't stand out. There is no hard and fast rule for how many there should be.

Ray McCarthy said:

All that matters is that they don't stand out.

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Indeed.

Imagine the editor of a magazine thinking to themselves, "This is a really good article, but something's definitely missing...."

Ray McCarthy said:

That's nearly 1/2 normal. Having it very low isn't a virtue, could be bad even. All that matters is that they don't stand out. There is no hard and fast rule for how many there should be.

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http://blog.dictionary.com/commonwords/

Your right, my sample of 1,000 words was low. I don't have access to my WIP to take another count, but I think I will do so later tonight again and see how I do. I've been banging on about repeating really.

I've done another sample of 1,000 words and got 23 THEs. I'm beginning to think it might just be me with a THE issue here!