A quote from Word Detective:...Ahem. David Crystal in his volume discussing
Language and the Internet quotes research by Davis & Brewer which suggests that most contributors to a forum like this “read on average only between five and seven other postings before sending their own”. To start repeating material after only
4 posts invites repetetititiiveness – I suggest a christening of this effect as Chopped Liver Index, calculated as the number of intervening posts divided into the overall number of posts in the thread ;)
David Crystal, (2001)
Language and the Internet, Cambridge University Press: ISBN 0521802121
http://www.cambridge.org
