Authorial and Text Style
Task C- Sentence-length variation from the average
One obvious reason for the lack of correlation between the sentence-length
and our perceptions of the style of the Lawrence passage has to do with
how much variation there is from the average as we move from sentence
to sentence through the passage. In some writing, each sentence (or most
sentences) has a word-length reasonably close to the average for the passage.
But in other examples of writing, individual sentence lengths might vary
dramatically from the average for the passage. That is what we will explore
in the next task.
Look back at the word-counts that you did for the
individual sentences for each passage and compare them with the averages
for those passages. How much did the sentences of each passage vary from
the average?
This variation from an average is what the statisticians call "Standard
Deviation" from that average. Standard deviation can be calculated
mathematically, and the greater the variation the higher the standard
deviation figure is. But you probably won't want to get involved in more
complex maths, and as the passages are small we have produced some representations
in the form of a graph. The sentence numbers of the relevant text are
displayed on the horizontal axis. For convenience we have represented
the Ellegård Norm as a straight line across the graph.
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