I am goin to carry out an investigation of which the outcome will determine which has longer lettered words in two pieces of text extracted from conflicting origins.

Method

Similar sections (in size) from each newspaper will be counted to obtain a more reliable range of results. This should give a good overall view to the word length in a givin section. Thus the same number of words will be used to keep the investigation fair. I have chosen to take one hundered words from each as I deem it worthy to test my hypothesis and is easliy divisable.

I have decided to count all letters, numbrs and abreviations between spaces as one word. Eg. "100th", (numbers) would be seen as a five letter word and "I'd", (an abreviation) would be seen as a two lettered word. With this set counting standard I can judge each word and how many letters it contains alot more accuratly and effectively. Once having collected the data I will form a tally chart. The will elaborate on this by adding the mean median and mode to gain a better picture of the results. This will show if there is any distinct pattern which would prove or disprove my hypothesis. I will be looking for the most frequent and the longest. I will state, if any, byist or anomalous results I may have come accross.

Results

The Sun (article from)

Word length (letters) Frequency Cumulative Frequency

. l l l l l 5 5

2. l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l 15 30

3. l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l 25 75

4. l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l 20 80

5. l l l l l l l l l l l l l 13 65

6. l l l l l 5 30

7. l l l l l l 6 42

8. l l l l 4 25

9. l l l l l l 6 54

0.l 1 10

1. 0 0

2. 0 0

3. 0 0

Total = 100

Mean = 4.23

Median = 5 (13 frequency)

Mode = 3 lettered words

(See Appendix A. for frequency graph).

The Telegraph

Word length (letters) Frequency Cumulative Frequency

. l l l 3 3

2. l l l l l l l l l l l l l l 14 28

3. l l l l l l l l l l l l 12 36

4 l l l l l l l l l l l l 12 48

5. l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l 17 85

6. l l l l l l l l l l 10 60

7. l l l l l 5 35

8. l l l l l l l l l l l l l l 14 112

9. l l l l l l 6 54

0. l l 2 20

1. l l l l l 5 55

2. 0 0

3. 0 0

Total = 100

Mean = 5.36

Median = 5.5 (13.5 frequency)

Mode = 5 lettered words

(See Appendix B. for frequency graph).

Analysis

By looking at the Hystogram (appendix a) I formed from these results, I can see clearly a pattern has emerged. The broadsheet has a range of 11 to the range of 10 from The Sun. The median is also a higher for the Telegraph. The Inter Quartile Range is much the samein the lower quatiles then there is a more constant level in the number of letters per word for the Telegraph. The Telegraph has Inter Quartile Range of 2.75 compared to The Suns 2.5. The overall view is important so I have formed bar charts to give a better view of the papers word size. The Telegraph has a higher boundary of 11 letters per word compared to a lower upper boundary of 10 for The Sun. Lower boundaries are both the same at 1. The Suns Bar chart shows a high frequency density around 2-5 with a very low frequency density in the high letters per word area on the chart (6-10) whereas The Telegraph has a higher frequency density around the high letters per word area. This shows that The Telegraph has larger words.

The cumulative frequency table shows The Telegraph has a greater frequency of letters per word. The Sun has more of the lower number of letters per word sized words than The Telegraph. The Telegraph has a larger mean (5.36) than The Sun (4.23). The Telegraph has a higher number of letters per word. I have came across some anomalous results as the Telegraph for the seven lettered words seem to be very few and doesn't go with the trend as the Histogram shows as there is a dip in that area. I think this is merely an anomalous result and not typical evidence of a broadsheet.

Conclusion

I deem the method to be satisfactory to test my hypothesis but to elaborate on this technique I would discount numbers were I included this time round.

In the analysis the results suggest that The Telegraph has more letters per word on average than The Sun, but this does not mean that this is conclusive. There is only a small sample that has been taken. If there was more time I would take a larger, more wider investigation by taking more samples and other articles from different types of literature to compare. Our class could have shared our results so it was a broader range to compare but I have only thought of this in the late stages of the investigation. I could also have investigated on the size of photographs or pictures that were in the papers, to see if there was a correlation between the size and number of pictures to the size of the words. The word size in a piece of text might not mean that the text is more profound or easier to read, this was an assemption I made which may ring untrue and void the investigation, this means my conclusion is not definite and remains inconclusive.

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