Computation into criticism : a study of Jane Austen's novels and an experiment in method
It is a truth quite infrequently acknowledged that, in most discussions of works of English fiction, we proceed as if a third of our material was not really there. Common prepositions, conjunctions, personal pronouns, and articles, and the verb-forms "was", "be", and "had", make up such a proportion of each of Jane Austen's novels. There is no doubt that a roughly similar proportion exists in the work of many other English novelists. John Burrows shows that in the drawing of character in Jane Austen's writings very common words prove to be intrinsically revealing.