In David Crystal's "Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language", after discussing the problems involved he gives the figures arrived at by the method described by Shanks:

"An office secretary, a businesswoman (and a voracious reader), and a lecturer all carried out this exercise: their active totals (respectively) were 31,500, 63,000, and 56,250; their passive totals were 38,300, 73,350, and 76,250 -- an average increase of 25 per cent." (page 123)

P.S. would you like to guess which words (not proper names) the spell check didn't recognise?


Bingley

Bingley