statistics - Standard deviation for average sentence and paragraph length?


I was able to find a source that gave an average for sentence length in the english language of 14 words. I am curious as to what the standard deviation for that number is.


Also, I couldn't find any averages for how many sentences are in a paragraph. Again, I am also interested in knowing the standard deviation for that.


I know these averages can vary highly depending on the document.



Answer



This paper empirically fits a distribution to the sentence lengths in a variety of English and Greek works:



Sichel, HS. On a Distribution Representing Sentence-Length in Written Prose. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A (General) Vol. 137, No. 1 (1974), pp. 25-34



This in turn relies on two other papers that measured average word and sentence length in the works of Thomas Babington Macaulay, HG Wells, and GK Chesterton:



Williams, CB. A note on the statistical analysis of sentence-length as a criterion of literary style. Biometrika (1940), 31, 356-361.


Yule, GU. On sentence-length as a statistical characteristic of style in prose: with applications to two cases of disputed authorship. Biometrika (1939), 30, 363-390.




  • Thomas Babington Macaulay: mean sentence length 22.07 words, variance 230.22

  • HG Wells: mean 24.08, variance 199.38

  • GK Chesterton: mean 25.91, variance 131.05


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