Arizona republican., 1920-08-01
By Frederic J. haskin

ter of the tongue and scratch of the lead pencil that goes on from the time one is born to the day of his last slow ride what word of all those in the di tionary, do you suppose, he uses tho greatest number of times? Would you like to know the word that is the second favorite, the one that is enun- ciated third most frequently, and the one that occupies fourth place among verbal tools?
 This unusual fact has recently been determined Folks use the word the twice as often as any other. Next to it is and. Then follow of and to. Since all of us are egotiSts the little pronoun I is the fifth word in use, and ] occurs third ofuener than the pro- noun you. A, in, that, for, it, was, is, will and as, appear in order
 1 In eliciting the above facts the sta l tistician has disproven the widely ac- l cepted theory that he is dull and i tedious individual who may be de- | pended upon to select for his enumera- tions some obscure and technical sub | ject in which the average run of men and women are not interested. Here is one man of tables and averages who | is human. H was, during the World War. Colonel Leonard P. Ayres, at tached to the office of the chief ot staff He is now Mir. Ayres, director of education for the Russell Sage Foundation.
 Save These War Figures
 At the close of the war Colonel Ayres compiled for the war depart ment a statistical summary whict showed at a glance what had happened during those months of conflict. His summary showed. for instance. tha the total battle deaths in the recen war were grater than the deaths in al wars for hundred years before: tha Russia suffered most, despite he withdrawal: that Germany lost thirty 1 two times many men as the Unite' | States: France 2S times as many, am Great Britain IS times as many. Il this war 53 men in 1000 were killed il battle in a year, while in the Civil Wa B in 1000 were so killed, and in tn Mexican war 15 in each 1000 Thu the death rate in battle during tn
 World War was highest of all wars. Colonel Ayres further reported tha , during the Mexican War 110 in eac ,o00 men died of disease, and that 6 in each 1000 men were lost from tn < same cause during the Civil War. Bu : during the World War the loss froT
 disease was only 19 in each 1000 meI so that the late conflict scored a gres
 success through making a science ( cleanliness.
 . Now the man who compiled these vi 5 tai figures has been counting tf : words people use. The ten next mo: | used words are have. not. with. b I your, at, we, on. he, by. They are a s little fellows, who, like Peter Pal e never grow up.
 . Colonel Ayres. in his study of edr I cational problems. developed the the d ory that the words in the spellir e books should be those which peep 2 use in that most common form of wri E ing which appears in the letters the
 transcribe. Spoken words do not nee f to be spelled. Few people write an, = thing other than business and person = letters. Would it be possible he aske d to find out what words were used = this sort of writing, and to make SUI = that they were in the spelling books. a Few Words Are Used e He went to a dozen different O . ganizations which received typical le l. ters. and got great packs of them f. f statistical analysis. He tabulated le 5, ters running into more than 5000 l. words altogether. The surprising ia IS was developed that but about 2.00o di
 ferent words were used in all this co
 respondence. A man with a vocab1
 lary of 2,00o words could have di
 tated these letters from thousands
 people, writing on hundreds of su
 jects Yet the child in the elementa
 grades studies about 12.0o0 words, al
 desk dictionary contains 25,0i
 Many of these words are so rare tn
 the average individual never us " them. The practical thing would see 'e to be to learn the used words fir m To find out those words was the o n ject of this queer statistical compil Ia tion.
 l. Half of the bulk of the letters WIT re ten by the people is made up of a sir ID pie list of fifty words. all of which a
 of one syllable, except the mode ar participant, any. Three hundred wor Id constitute three fourths of the spa 's. i nthe letters we write, and thousa lo of them do ninety per cent of ve work. In the first 200 of most fl a quently used words there are but re half dozen of more than one syllat ay They are nearly all homely words
 Anglo Saxon derivation. They are su r. words as when. time, some, any. ci
 what. send. them. more. week, mig
 their. good. say, could, make, wri
 thing.
 If you run along the list of Colo
 Ayres' words you find at the bott'
 of the eight columns the followir
 men. came. fnatter, separate. ten
 push, concern. and the thousand
 word, in the frequency of its use,
 wreck
 Even were the language reduced
 the simplicity of the thousand wol
 most frequently used. there are
 people who can spell them all e
 rectly. Among them, for instance,
 judgment. and it is surprising h many individuals there are who p
 fligately spend an unjustified 'e'
 this stout member of the dictions
 family of the thousand reconme