The article was in English Today, Vol. 11 No. 2 (the April 1995 issue) so those of you who have access to decent libraries can LIU. English Today is published by the Oxford University Press, and is supposed to be on the Internet, but last time I looked, admittedly some time ago) it was for those with institutional subscriptions only.

To summarise, he looked at lists which had appeared in various places of what words various writers or newspaper readers thought beautiful. He then did a statistical analysis of what sounds and word features appeared frequently in the lists and what didn't. The "rules" I posted earlier were the result. "Tremulous" is a word which scored 10 out of 10. "Alyssum" and "alumnus" scored 9/10 each. "Zoo" scored 0/10.



Bingley

Bingley