Comments on: OnText Grammar Police talk about how unique a thing can be http://ontext.com/2010/07/ontext-grammar-police-talk-unique/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=ontext-grammar-police-talk-unique Thu, 17 May 2012 04:18:17 +0000 hourly 1 By: admin http://ontext.com/2010/07/ontext-grammar-police-talk-unique/comment-page-1/#comment-1280 admin Wed, 11 Aug 2010 19:36:20 +0000 http://ontext.com/?p=942#comment-1280 Thanks tremendously for the input. I can't imagine most users going to that length. By page 11, actually by page two most of the time, of any Google search, the user has made a choice and moved on. I used the example for drama. If that was misunderstood, I beg pardon. :) Thad, you got a lot of time on your hands? :) --mkp Thanks tremendously for the input. I can’t imagine most users going to that length. By page 11, actually by page two most of the time, of any Google search, the user has made a choice and moved on. I used the example for drama. If that was misunderstood, I beg pardon. :)

Thad, you got a lot of time on your hands? :)
–mkp

]]> By: Thad McIlroy, The Future of Publishing http://ontext.com/2010/07/ontext-grammar-police-talk-unique/comment-page-1/#comment-1278 Thad McIlroy, The Future of Publishing Mon, 09 Aug 2010 00:38:58 +0000 http://ontext.com/?p=942#comment-1278 Your point is well taken, if not your search process. You seemed to have searched without quotation marks. So on a search of those two words which today supposedly produced "about 640,000,000 results,” by page 11 of those results I was sent to links that used both words but not consecutively. Put them in quotations and you encounter "about 1,560,000 results" but also one of the odd things about Google search. While this number is usually referenced when someone wishes to illustrate the enormous number of hits on Google, the number is meaningless. As far as I can determine it includes enormous numbers of duplicates. I'm not sure why. The only way to find the real number is to go to the last page of search finding and see the count there. In this case there are a mere 761 unique citations, although "unique" in this case means only 761 UNIQUE WEB PAGES that contain the term. Because the web offers many pages that are content duplicates or which cite large blocks of text from other pages, a more careful analysis would demonstrate that even 761 was overstated. The grammatical problem is real, but not as severe as you would imagine. Your point is well taken, if not your search process. You seemed to have searched without quotation marks. So on a search of those two words which today supposedly produced “about 640,000,000 results,” by page 11 of those results I was sent to links that used both words but not consecutively.

Put them in quotations and you encounter “about 1,560,000 results” but also one of the odd things about Google search. While this number is usually referenced when someone wishes to illustrate the enormous number of hits on Google, the number is meaningless. As far as I can determine it includes enormous numbers of duplicates. I’m not sure why. The only way to find the real number is to go to the last page of search finding and see the count there.

In this case there are a mere 761 unique citations, although “unique” in this case means only 761 UNIQUE WEB PAGES that contain the term. Because the web offers many pages that are content duplicates or which cite large blocks of text from other pages, a more careful analysis would demonstrate that even 761 was overstated.

The grammatical problem is real, but not as severe as you would imagine.

]]> By: admin http://ontext.com/2010/07/ontext-grammar-police-talk-unique/comment-page-1/#comment-1275 admin Wed, 21 Jul 2010 16:26:07 +0000 http://ontext.com/?p=942#comment-1275 :) :)

]]> By: admin http://ontext.com/2010/07/ontext-grammar-police-talk-unique/comment-page-1/#comment-1274 admin Wed, 21 Jul 2010 16:25:58 +0000 http://ontext.com/?p=942#comment-1274 Thanks; that was a fairly unique post! ;-) W. Jordan Thanks; that was a fairly unique post! ;-)
W. Jordan

]]>